This is a piece I first wrote for Talkingteaching 🙂 Yesterday I was up in Auckland at Scicon (the national secondary science teachers’ conference. There’ve been some great presentations, including a lovely on on bioluminescence by fellow sciblogger Siouxsie Wiles (did you know that our very own NZ glow worms mate for hours & then […]
Continue readingYear: 2012
divergent views on the importance of critical thinking
Regular readers will know that I spend quite a bit of time rioting about critical thinking: what it is, why it’s important, how to develop the relevant skills in our students. In fact, I tell my own students that one of the most important things they’ll gain from their time at uni is the ability […]
Continue readingwhat constitutes beauty? – tarantulas!
Wellington Zoo has just imported 106 Chilean rose tarantulas as part of a captive breeding program for these lovely animals. From the tone of a letter in today’s Waikato Times, the spiders are also in need of a public relations officer.
Continue readinganother silly homeopathic product
Checking my in-box today I came upon this offering: HCG Diet Direct – hCG Diet Drops – Homeopathic Drops HCG Diet Direct – Lose weight on the homeopathic HCG Diet without heavy exercise or without frozen or prepared foods to buy. HCG Diet Direct – a brand you can trust http://losskilosmore.ru HCG = Human Chorionic […]
Continue readingreflections on the WEB days
We’ve just held the second day of the annual "Waikato Experience of Biology" (WEB) days – around 700 year 13 biology students, & their teachers, have come on campus over those 2 days for a program of seminars + some lab experience that supports their learning in several areas of their Biology curriculum. (There are […]
Continue readinga good old debunking – flatulent dinosaurs & aquatic apes
I took a little time over lunch to catch up with the work of various science communicators, most notably that of Brian Switek, whose blog Laelaps is carried by the Wired website & who also writes Dinosaur Tracking on Smithsonian.com. I’m now regretting my long absence, for not only is Brian an excellent communicator of […]
Continue readingthe great class-size debate
I haven’t blogged much lately, due to a combination of factors to do with my ‘day’ job. But I’ve followed the recent heated debate around proposed changes to class size with much interest, & I did manage to pull together something for my ‘other’ blog. So I’ve reproduced that here 🙂 Here in New Zealand, […]
Continue readinganother stunning biological image
(And once again, I found this via PZ Myers.) Although it looks like a flower , this is an image of a limpet embryo, stained to show 4 different proteins and viewed (& photographed) using a confocal microscope. There are several other stunning images at the Node, which is an on-line community site for developmental […]
Continue readingnz herald, what are you *thinking* – all kids are psychic?
From the Herald’s website, we hear that [a]ll children are psychic and they’re tuned in to their abilities now more than ever, according to one of Australia’s top intuitives. Oh, really? And there’s more: "We’re starting to see little kids who can see spirits, who can actually validate who it is. It’s different to a […]
Continue readingsagan on science & society
Carl Sagan was a great science communicator with a wonderful turn of phrase. I found this quote a little while back & think it’s still apt today:
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