teaching
grrlscientist | November 3, 2006
I loved this one .. perhaps this also is how I was introduced to jazz and blues, which are passions of mine?
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tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video
sporte | November 1, 2006These are the real things that give nightmares to post-docs and graduate students.
One thing that you don't learn, until you either do a research project in a lab or you start graduate school, is that science isn't really the straightforward cut and dry: we do this step, then we do this step; sort of field that you might imagine. You come to graduate school all bright-eyed and amazed, with the scientific method burned into your brain, only to find out that it's usually the little things that no one told you about that make the difference between productive experiments and a waste of time.…
grrlscientist | October 27, 2006
As a professor who (sometimes) teaches Anatomy and Physiology to nursing students, I think this is a great video.
Bones are heard of, but seldom seen,
'Cept each year 'round Hallowe'en.
But I've got a shockeroo
Right now there's a skeleton locked up inside of you! (Ha-ha-ha)
Minus bones you're just a blob,
Being framework's their main job.
All your organs, muscles, too,
They need your bones to hold them safe and sound inside for you.
Your heart and lungs are tucked away,
In there behind your ribs.
Those bones have been protecting them
Since we were little kids.
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tags: schoolhouse rock…
grrlscientist | October 20, 2006
This isn't the prettiest streaming video, but I think it will bring back some fun memories.
Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here
Quickly, quickly, quickly, get your adverbs here
Slowly, surely, really, learn your adverbs here
You're going need 'em if you read 'em
if you write or talk or think about it
Lolly ... Lolly ... Lolly ...
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tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video
grrlscientist | October 13, 2006
What's a noun without a verb to make it zoom!
Verb you're so intense
Every sentence has a subject
Noun, person, place or thing
Find that subject, where's the action?
Verb can make the subject zing
Take the subject, what is it?
What's done to it?
What does it say?
Verb! You're what's happening!
I can question like,
What is it?
Verb! You're so demanding!
I can order like,
Go get it.
Verb! You're so commanding!
When I hit I need an object!
When I see I see the object!
I get my thing in action!
Verb! That's what's happening!
To work, to play, to live, to love.
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tags: schoolhouse rock,…
sporte | October 9, 2006How can you extend a blood typing activity with an active learning approach?
The blood typing lab, part I. What went wrong? and why?
Blood typing part II. Can this laboratory be saved?
The learning objective: To understand the inheritance of blood type.
In this activity students:
1. Identify which blood type a person would have based on their alleles,
2. Observe the alleles that an offspring would have and identify the blood types of the offspring,
3. Use the observations and rules gleaned from step 2 to predict the blood types of other offspring, when given the genotypes of their…
sporte | October 7, 2006The blood typing lab, part I. What went wrong? and why?
Blood typing part II. Can this laboratory be saved?
Those wacky non-major Zoo students are at it again! And this time they drew blood!
Mike's undergraduate students learned about blood typing, a common tool of detectives and real crime TV. They did the classic blood typing lab, and by golly, they refused to parrot the correct answer on the test! The nerve! After all, he pretty much told them the answer and even used the exact same wording that was used on the test question. Why didn't the students just memorize it and…
sporte | October 6, 2006Many science experiments are carefully thought out. Often, the procedures we follow have been thoroughly tested. We measure everything we can at every point that we can, so that we can determine if a procedure, like isolating DNA, is working properly and if the procedure doesn't work, we can determine what went wrong. When the procedure is done, we analyze our data to determine if our experiments really gave us an answer. Then, we present our data to others, in venues like lab meetings and conferences, subjecting our work to review to the toughest critics we can find.
Every act of…
grrlscientist | October 6, 2006
We had a truly impressive lightning storm the other night here in NYC. So impressive that the nurses here at the hospital were all commenting about it. As a result, I was inspired to link to this Schoolhouse Rock primer about the weather.
Welcome everyone,
It's the weather show!
Bring your bathing suits,
Don't forget your boots and coats.
Folks, we guarantee the show that we perform
Is never dull, if there's a lull,
It's just the calm before the storm.
Watch it change from icy cold to toasty warm,
And rearrange from sunny days to crazy storms.
The curtain's rising, we're so glad to have…
grrlscientist | September 29, 2006
We're talkin' 'bout dollars and sense,
dollars and sense;
Them green-back bills with the pictures
of the Presidents.
Since life is one experience
that spares us no expense,
Gotta use them dollars
with a little bit of common sense.
We gotta use them dollars
with a little bit of common sense.
Are you sure Dolly Parton started this way?
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tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video
sporte | September 27, 2006Over the summer, a few ScienceBloggers were pondering the question of why students disappear from science courses, never to return.
James Hrynshyn wrote that we're teaching youngsters the wrong thing. Zuska boldy pointed out the things that many of us think but don't say out loud. Chad Orzel noted that science is hard and shared his thoughts about why students leave. Stein Sigurdsson, on the other other hand, proposed that students leave because science is not hard enough.
Just this week, ScienceBlogger Mike Dunford provided part of the answer to the disappearing student question, when…
grrlscientist | September 22, 2006
This streaming video is clumsily made, but at least the visual quality is good.
I'm a victim of gravity.
Everything keeps fallin' down on me.
No matter where I go
That forces that I know,
Just a pullin' me down, down, down, down, down.
It's all around town now,
It's like a magnet deep inside the ground.
When I lift something up,
I can feel it pulling down.
It pulls me in the pool,
It pulls rain down on me.
I'm a victim of
Down, down, down, down, gravity, yeah.
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tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video
grrlscientist | September 15, 2006
Well every person you can know
The Beatles and the Monkees, Chubby Checker
And every place that you can go
Like a neighborhood or a store
And anything that you can show
Like a dime or a record machine
You know they're nouns.
A noun's a special kind of word
It's any name you ever heard
I find it quite interesting
A noun's a person, place or thing.
A noun is a person, place or thing.
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tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video
grrlscientist | September 8, 2006
Lovely Lady Liberty
With her book of recipes
And the finest one she's got
Is the great American melting pot
The great Anerican melting pot.
What good ingredients,
Liberty and immigrants.
They brought the country's customs,
Their language and their ways.
They filled the factories, tilled the soil,
Helped build the U.S.A.
Go on and ask your grandma,
Hear what she has to tell
How great to be an American
And something else as well.
Have Americans forgotten our beginnings?
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tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video
grrlscientist | September 1, 2006
My hero, Zero, such a funny little hero,
But 'till you came along,
We counted on our fingers and toes.
Now you're here to stay
And nobody really knows
How wonderful you are.
Why we could never reach a star,
Without you, Zero, my hero,
How wonderful you are.
What's so wonderful about a zero?
It's nothing, isn't it?
Sure, it represents nothing alone.
But place a zero after 1
And you've got yourself a 10.
See how important that is?
When you run out of digits,
You can start all over again.
See how convenient that is?
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tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video
grrlscientist | August 11, 2006
So when you're happy (Hurray!) or sad (Aw!)
Or frightened (Eeeeeek!) or mad (Rats!)
Or excited (Wow!) or glad (Hey!)
An interjection starts a sentence right.
Interjections (Hey!) show excitement (Hey!) or emotion (Hey!).
They're generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point,
Or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong.
Interjections show excitement or emotion,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah... YEA!
This episode is one of several that really sticks out in my mind.
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tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video
grrlscientist | August 8, 2006
Image appears here with the kind permission of its creator, John Kyrk.
A friend sent me a link to an interesting website. John Kyrk, an artist and biologist, has recreated a huge variety of biology topics using interactive flash animations, ranging from animo acids and proteins to water chemistry, from meiosis to electron transport. All of the material on this site looks like great teaching aides and they are also really fun to play with.
One of these animations is a timeline through the evolution of life beginning with the Big Bang. I am still poking around John's site, but I think the…
grrlscientist | August 4, 2006
We the people
In order to form a more perfect union,
Establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility,
Provide for the common defense,
Promote the general welfare and
Secure the blessings of liberty
To ourselves and our posterity
Do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America.
This video should bring back a few memories for some of you, and it is an important lesson for the current administration, who behave as though they've never heard of the US Constitution.
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tags: schoolhouse rock, education, teaching, streaming video
grrlscientist | August 1, 2006I am sure that some of you have read this already, but here is a printable version of the cogent article published last year in the excellent magazine, The New Yorker, that discusses so-called "intelligent design". This article, entitled Why Intelligent Design Isn't, was published in May 2005 and is still relevant today.
This article should be required reading for all high school and college students who are studying biology.
Several issues it explains regarding "intelligent design", including the scientific refutations of these ID assertions;
ID is not Biblical literalism.
Behe's…
grrlscientist | July 29, 2006
This animated tutorial allows you to view the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. It then moves through space towards Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. Then the animation moves from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.
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tags: orders of magnitude, exponential notation, powers of ten, animation,…