Dr. Eugenie Scott

As science educators are increasingly reporting attacks on climate change education, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is announcing that they will also be defending climate change science in public school science education.  Join us as Dr. Eugenie Scott explains this new initiative for NCSE by adding climate change to their portfolio in defending good science education.

Links:

• National Center for Science Education
• “US Teachers Offered Support for Climate Change Lessons” (the Guardian)
• Episode 15 – Expelled Exposed
• NCSE: “A New Poll on Evolution and Climate Change”
• NCSE: “Teachers Feeling the Heat Over Climate Change”
• Dr. Eugenie Scott Interview with “Flock of Dodos” filmmaker Randy Olson, October 2010 (YouTube)
• “Plate Tectonics is a Hoax!”

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

Jamie Loizzo

Our guest this week is Jamie Loizzo, project manager for Purdue zipTrips™. A zipTrip is an electronic, interactive field trip that connects students across the country to scientists at Purdue University.  Through the experience, students are able to observe real-life science laboratories, research and science careers.  Listen to the interview and take your kids on a zipTrip!

Links

• Purdue zipTrips™
• Follow zipTrips on Twitter
• Find zipTrips on Facebook
• zipTrips on YouTube
• Jamie Loizzo, Project Manager
• zipTrips: Behind the Scenes (EzineMark.com)
• “Field Trips Go Electronic” from Post-Tribune
• “Electronic Field Trip Brings Science to Students“ (Farm and Dairy)

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

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. Jonathan Osborne

Join us to kick off our 2011-2012 season by talking science standards with Jonathan Osborne from Stanford University.  As a committee member who helped draft the Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards released this summer, Osborne talks to us about science practices, crosscutting concepts and core ideas found within the framework.

Preview from the Show:

The intention of this document was that it would spell out the kind of broad framework of what it was that a science education K-12 should attempt to achieve.  And the framework… basically has conceptualized this really in terms of it being a framework for the practices, which are: what kinds of things do scientists do, what are the cross-cutting concepts that appear in all of the sciences, and then what are the core ideas?  And the core ideas are conceptualized in terms of life science, physical sciences, earth sciences, and what we may call ideas that are central to engineering. …This document will be used to write a set of standards, which will be the set of common core standards in science.

…there are these practices that scientists engage in: asking questions, analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations using modeling.  And therefore, you can’t really say that you’ve got a rounded science education or complete science education if you don’t spell out to students that this process of analyzing and interpreting data is something that is fundamental and key to science.

Education is about making people think.  It’s about interesting people in a topic.  It’s about engaging them so that they will pursue it for the rest of their lives.  Now I’m speaking to this kind of mythical parent here, but if you just want them to know the stuff – yeah, sure, they’ll know it for the test tomorrow.  But you’ll not be leaving them with the legacy, or enduring interest and love of a subject.  And do you want your kid to be someone who’s stimulated, engaged and interested in school?  Or do you want them to be someone who regards [school] as a boring place where all they have to do is get a lot of information shoved down their throat, regurgitate and forget it the next day?  At the moment, we do too much of the latter in science education.  And I don’t blame the teachers for that; a lot of it’s about the assessment and the ways in which that assessment has become high-stakes.  And there’s not enough space for making things and exploring ideas.  That’s what education should really be about – exploring ideas.

Links:

• Jonathan Osborne, Stanford
• Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards  The book can be read or downloaded at no charge from the National Academies Press.
• Committee on Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards
• Next Generation Science Standards
• Happy 5th Anniversary

Featured Image used with Permission from the National Academy of Sciences

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

Periodic Table of Videos Team

Links:

• Periodic Table of Videos (non-YouTube version)
• PTOV YouTube Channel
• PTOV Roadtrips
• PTOV Molecular Videos
• PTOV Blog
• PTOV Flickr Photostream
• PTOV on Twitter
• PTOV on Facebook
• PTOV Outtakes, and videos about science and scientists in Nottingham
• International Year of Chemistry
• Sixty Symbols (Physics)

Chem Definition Video: Polyatomic

The International Year of Chemistry 2011 (IYC 2011) is a worldwide celebration of the achievements of chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind. Under the unifying theme “Chemistry—our life, our future,” IYC 2011 will offer a range of interactive, entertaining, and educational activities for all ages. The Year of Chemistry is intended to reach across the globe, with opportunities for public participation at the local, regional, and national level.

Direct download: LOL56.mp3

This week we talk with Dr. Marie Studer (EOL Learning and Education Director) and Mr. Bob Corrigan (EOL Product Manager and Acting Deputy Director) to learn about the EOL, how to participate in the project, and how it can be used in the classroom.

E.O. Wilson on Saving the Earth (TED):

EOL Links

• The Encyclopedia of Life
• The Encyclopedia of Life (E.O. Wilson, 2003)
• Navigate (learn how to navigate EOL, search for content, customize your experience, explore pages, and where to find background information)
• L+E Website
• EOL Podcasts
• NameLink
• CoolIris
• Encyclopedia of Life images (Flickr)

Links

• Aaron’s World
• NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical
• “A Bacterium that Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorous” (Science)
• It’s Not Arsenic-Based Life (PZ Myers’ Pharyngula)
• Silicon-Based Life?
• Brian Updates His Textbooks

This episode was prompted by a comment in episode 49:

I coach the Ocean Sciences Bowl team (Lake Sturgeon Bowl is the regional) at my High School. We listen to Ocean Gazing while setting up or buzzer system at the beginning of our meetings. Check out the bobbing and bowling episode from last February to hear our team as one of the features. I also like to listen to the Encyclopedia of Life’s “One species at a Time” podcast (also called Podcast of Life). Both podcasts are hosted by Ari Daniel Shapiro who also does some NPR work.

Direct download: LOL54.mp3 (42 minutes long)

Daniel M. Carchidi and Dr. Natalie Kuldell

This week we talk with Daniel M. Carchidi (Publication Director) and Dr. Natalie Kuldell (instructor) about MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW).  OCW is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content, open and available to the world.

How do you learn science? Join the conversation at www.laboutloud.com to share your favorite classes, media sources, or other ways to learn about science.

Links

• MIT OpenCourseWare
• OCW Highlights for High School
• OCW Consortium
• Dr. Natalie Kuldell
• Dr. Kuldell’s OCW Courses
• Dr. Kuldell’s OpenWetWare
• BioBuilder

Direct download: LOL53.mp3

Rhett Allain

This week we discuss our favorite science blogs and talk to Rhett Allain – an Associate Professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana University.  Rhett discusses science teaching and his popular blog Dot Physics, at www.wired.com/wiredscience/dotphysics.

What science blogs do you follow?  Join the conversation at laboutloud.com to share your favorite science blogs and websites.

Want to setup an RSS Reader?  Read “Setup an RSS Reader” or and watch Google Reader in Plain English (below):

Our Favorite Science Blogs (in alphabetical order):

• Bad Astronomy  (Discover)
• Big Blog Theory
• Cocktail Party Physics
• dy/dan
• Extreme Biology
• Fake Science
• Geek Dad (WIRED)
• Gray Matter (Popular Science)
• The Loom (Discover)
• Periodic Table of Videos
• Pharyngula (Science Blogs)
• Remarkable Creatures (NY Times)
• Sceptical Chymist (nature.com)
• Twisted Physics
• Wired Science

Our Blogs:

• dalebasler.com (Dale)
• BaslerCast (Dale’s Class Blog)
• explodingsink.com (Brian)
• bartelements.com (Brian’s Class Website)

Direct download: LOL51.mp3

Our guest this week is Jim Brey, Director of the Education Program at the American Meteorological Society.  Jim talks to us about the AMS Education Program, which promotes the teaching of atmospheric, oceanographic, and hydrologic sciences through pre-college teacher training and instructional resource material development.

Links:

• AMS Education Program
• DataStreme Atmosphere – Links to weather maps and other items of interest
• DataStreme Ocean - Links to ocean data and maps and other items of interest
• Ocean in the Earth System Book (Read Chapter 1)
• Weather Studies Book (Read Chapter 1)
• AMS Contacts
• AMS News Releases
• Jim Brey, 2003 Wisconsin Professor of the Year
• Video of Simulated Tornado

Direct download: LOL31.mp3

Dr. Martyn Poliakoff

Our second international podcast brings us to the University of Nottingham, where The Periodic Table of Videos is hosted.  An online periodic table that includes short videos about each element, the PTOV has been watched over 3.9 million times.  Dr. Martyn Poliakoff, CBE – a research professor at the University of Nottingham – tells us about The Periodic Table of Videos, a project made possible with his team and video journalist Brady Haran.

• periodicvideos.com
• Visit the PTOV Channel on You Tube
  
• Subscribe for free at www.youtube.com/periodicvideos or via rss.
• Is You Tube blocked at your school?  Try Use www.periodicvideos.com/nyt/.
• Test Tube – Behind the Scenes in the World of Science

• Press Release from the University of Nottingham
• Article from C&EN
• Article from the Telegraph
• Links & Praise