Frank Noschese

This week we discuss teaching techniques with Frank Noschese.  Frank is a high school physics teacher at John Jay High School in Cross River, N.Y.  and an active blogger.  We talk with Frank about blogging, active student engagement, flipped classrooms, psuedoteaching, and the Khan Academy.  Join the conversation and leave your comments.

Preview from the Show:

There’s a lot of research and evidence to backup the fact that having a more interactive class does work.  And there’s a lot of ways to go about being interactive.  One way is with the questioning technique that you were talking about in the Harvard justice videos; I haven’t seen them, but it sounds like that’s one way.  Or using clickers is another way. Or with whiteboarding and modeling, where the kids are working in groups on these problems, and they’re working on them on these large whiteboards that maybe two or three kids can work on at a time, and they share and present their solutions to the problem.  So there’s lot of different techniques depending on the size of the class and the materials that you have, so I don’t think anybody should just be able to throw their hands up and say “well based on my situation, the only thing I can do is lecture”, because there’s always different techniques.

If you think back to even how you learned – something that you found you had to struggle through, whether it was a sport or an instrument, or a kind of arts and crafts, woodworking – anything like that.  You worked hard at it, got feedback from someone who knew what they were doing, there were lots of tests along the way to see if you were getting it or not.  That kind of interactivity and feedback is so necessary for learning.  And then there’s also people that say – we had this conversation on twitter a few months ago – where somebody said “but kids do learn from lecture, there are kids that are gaining.”  And it’s true, there are kids that do still learn physics through lecture, and what we think is going on there is that the kids are doing these active engagement strategies in their head, so they’re trying to think ahead: “what’s the next step this would take”, or “how does this fit in with that,” and they’re doing it in their head.  And these are very few kids that actually know how to learn from a lecture, and I would say the bulk of students just sit there and think that they’re going to learn from osmosis.

Links:

• Action-Reaction (Frank’s Blog)
• Frank on MSNBC talking about
• Frank on flipped classrooms with USA Today
• Follow Frank on Twitter
• Frank on the Web: Frank’s Posterous, Noschese 180, Win? Fail? PHYSICS!, WQDYH?
• Harvard’s Justice with Michael Sandel
• A Private Universe
• dy/dan (Dan Meyer)
• Geoset (Global Educational Outreach for Science, Engineering and Technology)
• Veritasium Science Videos

To listen to this episode, download the mp3 directly, find us on iTunes, or use the player below.

Dr. Kiki Sanford

Our guest this week is Dr. Kirsten Sanford, Ph.D. (Neurophysiology).  Dr. Sanford (Dr. Kiki) is making her way in independent science media and journalism.

Recently, Dr. Kiki shared a comment on her blog in a post entitled The Reason Why.  Here’s a snippet:

After showing her your podcasts, [my daughter] has discovered that it is not only possible but very rad to be both smart and interested in science but to like fashion and lip gloss at the same time.

We talked with Dr. Kiki about this post and women in science.

Links

• The Bird’s Brain – Dr Kiki’s Blog
• The Reason Why
• Food Science Videos
• World Science Festival with Dr. Kiki
• This Week in Science Podcast
• Kristen Sanford’s bio on TWIS
• Pop Siren

Direct download: LOL21.mp3

Bad Astronomer

Today’s guest calls himself the Bad Astronomer. Phil Plait is an astronomer, an author, and a well-known blogger at www.badastronomy.com. Phil talks to us about myths and skepticism in the science classroom.

Preview from the show:
Plait: I am in fact a skeptic. In the public mind – if you ask somebody “what’s a skeptic” – most people think it’s a cynic or a denier, somebody who just doesn’t believe in anything. And that’s not strictly true. All a skeptic is, is someone who demands evidence for a claim. If you come up to me and say the sky is pink, I’m going to say “what is your evidence for this?”. Or I’ll say, “that’s an interesting claim, but here’s the evidence against it.” It’s someone who applies critical thinking, logic, evidence, observation, the scientific method to any sort of claim.
Science is all about skepticism. They are hardly different – I mean skepticism is a tool of science. Richard Feynman (the physicist) said “science is a way of not fooling ourselves. It’s a way of figuring what’s out what’s really going on”. And skepticism is just a way of looking at things. It’s making sure that if you’re thinking about something, if there’s a claim that’s being made – whether it’s by a person or even yourself, there’s a way of examining it so that you can test its reality or not. And the problem is, it’s not something we teach our kids. In fact, we teach them exactly the opposite. We teach them to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. We go to movies where the skeptic is always a jerk, and the end is always the supenatural cause or trust in humanity or whatever.”

Plait: Scooby Doo was a great cartoon because in the end, it really wasn’t a ghost or whatever, it was always old man Marley wearing a mask, who didn’t want the developers to come in and destroy his farm or whatever.”

Plait: When you’re teaching kids to the test, and you’re saying “here’s how you do the math” without explaining why, “here’s what you’re supposed to get in the results in the lab” without explaining why, we’re not teaching our kids science. We’re teaching them nothing, we’re teaching them belief, faith – and that’s not what science is about. Science is not about belief, science is about evidence.

Follow the Bad Astronomer:

• Bad Astronomy Blog
• Contact Info
• Twitter
• Facebook Group

Posts from badastronomy.com discussed on the show:

• Standing an Egg on End on the Spring Equinox
• Are Apollo Moon Photos Fake?
• Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing “Hoax”

Books:

• Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing “Hoax”
  • read NSTA’s recommendation of the book
    
• Death From the Skies (pre-order from Amazon.com)

Skepticism on the Internet:

• The Skeptics Dictionary
• James Randi Educational Foundation
• PZ Myers: Pharyngula Blog
• Point of Inquiry Podcast
• Skeptical Inquirer Magazine
• Skeptoid Podcast
• Skepticality
• Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe

Direct download: nstalol12.mp3

PZ Myers

In this episode, we chat with PZ Myers – lead author of the blog Pharyngula (Pharyngula is hosted at Science Blogs – a project from Seed Magazine). Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

• Contact Information at UM Morris
• Curriculum Vitae
• Personal Page
• Profile on Nature Network
• Pharyngula Galleries
• Articles written by PZ Myers at Seed Magazine
• 2006 Weblog Award Winner: Best Science Blog

Preview from the Show:
Myers: What you want to do with a blog – it’s such an informal medium – if you get all stuffy and treat it as something where you are going to write a formal treatise everyday, I don’t think you’ll get as much interest. So by keeping it personal, keeping it human, what I think I’ve done is open up a little window into a science professor’s life, which is sometimes scary, but fun.

Basler: Do you think that this type of casual communication [blogging] is something really important that the students are going to need in the future, or was it just an experiment to try out because you were blogging?
Myers: Oh it’s both. I mean, this is a brave new medium. I’m trying new things; I wanna explore this and see what we can do with our students. But I also think it’s important for the future of science and science education – that what we want is active, involved learners at every stage of the game. And if this is a way that we can get people talking about science, then that’s a huge step – that’s important.

Myers: My schedule’s turning into a frightening thing; it’s getting so packed full of requests to talk, but I try to indulge in as much as possible.
Bartel: So you’re working on Darwin Day instead of enjoying it, is what you’re saying?
Myers: Well, getting up in front of an audience and talking about evolution and talking about science, talking about philosophy in these ideas – that’s not working is it?

Links:

• Wikipedia Entry
• The Mad Scientist (from Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages)
• Monkey’s Uncle (from Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages)
• PZ Myers on Richard Dawkins (from Seed Magazine)
• Interview with DailyKos
• Interview by John Horgan
• DarwinDay.org
• Darwin Day Celebration at Lawrence University – February 9, 2008

Books Discussed on the Show:

• Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
• The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen

Direct download: nstalol9.mp3