… for I fear the title (not to mention the image below!) of this video by Thunderf00t would put many off if they were not forewarned. A real pity, as the video contains some thought-provoking ideas, eg: the total value of a discovery is the product of data (the utility of an idea) & metadata (can […]
Continue readingCategory: education
out of the mouths of students
We’ve been trialling some software for on-line paper/teaching appraisals & I got my results back the other day. The appraisal form included open-ended questions where students could give extended feedback on particular issues that concerned them, & I’ve been going through it all so that I can give feedback in my turn, thus ‘closing the […]
Continue readingselling services on-line
Yesterday’s Sunday Star-Times carried the headline: Chinese cheats rort NZ universities with fakes. The story begins: An investigation has uncovered a well-organised commercial cheating service for Chinese-speaking students in New Zealand. The long-standing business uses a network of tutors, some outside New Zealand, to write original assignments ordered by Chinese-speaking students attending New Zealand universities, […]
Continue readingscience challenges & science education
The National Science Challenges have been announced – and have already received a lot of attention (including on Sciblogs, with posts by my colleagues Grant, Siouxsie, and John – who also points at where the money’s going). What I’d like to address here is the comment by the Panel that it was concerned by the lack […]
Continue readingcloning neandertals – can we? should we? is it true?
The Telegraph has a story on the possibility of cloning Neanderthals, with the fetching headline: ‘I can create Neanderthal baby, I just need willing woman.’ (You can read the NZ version on Stuff.) My first thought was ‘eeewww’. (And, as a friend commented, it’s stories like this that get science a bad name.) Once past that […]
Continue readingevolution – a good video for the classroom
Over lunch, I was catching up with my reading on various blogs and found – via PZ on Pharyngula – this little gem on evolution. The others on offer at the Stated Clearly site look good too; it would be nice to see the authors attract the crowd-sourcing they need to make more of the videos […]
Continue reading“the aviator” – a vision of the future that’s a little too close for comfort
I found the Herald’s front page this morning a sad and depressing read. My heart goes out to all those affected in some way by the terrible bush fires ravaging so much of Tasmania, Victoria, & New South Wales. I also had a certain sense of deja vu as I read of the fires – […]
Continue reading‘a newly discovered species of little people’
When the news first came out that Prof Mike Morwood & Thomas Sutikna were going to be giving a public lecture about Homo floresiensis, I was first excited & then seriously annoyed: yay! great topic, but rats! can’t get down to it. So I was absolutely delighted to see the following in this week’s Royal […]
Continue readingtalk nerdy to me
Grant’s talked quite a bit about TED talks. This one’s a cracker: Melissa Marshall talking about science communication. Important point for scientists: clear, careful explanations of what we’re doing =/= ‘dumbing it down’! And thanks, Annette, for passing it on 🙂
Continue readingwhy kids should grade teachers
Next week my first-year biology students will be doing an appraisal of this semester’s paper, & of those academic staff involved in teaching it. They’re asked about the perceived difficulty of the paper, the amount of work they’re expected to do for it, whether they’ve been intellectually stimulated, the amount of feedback they receive on […]
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