Today I spent an interesting & educational few hours at the University’s "Celebrating teaching excellence" day. This is when thestaff who’ve received Faculty, University, or national awards for their teaching share their ideas & techniques with their colleagues, and this is just wonderful as you’re guaranteed to learn something new 🙂
Continue readingTag: education
prior learning & university success in biology
One of the sessions at FYBEC – on the changes in NCEA Achievement Standards in order to align them with the 2007 Curriculum document – generated a lot of discussion. It was great to have this session, as a heads-up to the changes in prior learning that we’ll see in students coming in to uni-level […]
Continue readingchallenges in learning biology
I spent Monday & Tuesday of this week down in Wellington, attending the 2nd First-Year Biology Educators’ Colloquium. (Yes, that’s a mouthful! We usually just say FYBEC to those in the know.) It was really refreshing to spend time focusing on how we teach first-year biology at university, and on research into ways to enhance […]
Continue readingwhat about archaeopteryx?
As a distraction (or should that be ‘procrastination’?) from what’s currently filling up my diary (ie processing student enrolments), I’ve decided to look at another of those ‘science’ statements from the school documents I linked to in my last post. "What about the archeopteryx?" they ask. Well, what about it? This, from their webpage: The […]
Continue readingwriting about environmental history
Over lunch today I had a really interesting conversation about environmental history and why it’s a Good Thing to know about. Much of the discussion was around the environmental history of Palmerston North, where I lived for about 22 years, first as a student at Massey University & subsequently as a teacher (first in various […]
Continue readingpicking & choosing what to believe in…
In my last post on a ‘creationist biology curriculum’ I asked the question: what, exactly, do they teach? Over on the Sciblogs site (where this blog is syndicated), a commenter answered by pointing me at another school’s curriculum. As I read through it, I could feel the area beneath my collar getting distinctly heated. This […]
Continue readingwhat, exactly, do they teach?
I was spurred to write this by a comment Grant made on my previous post on the various NZ political parties’ stances on science education. In that post I linked to the website of a ‘special character’ school: one with a religious underpinning & which states that they replace ‘evolution’ with ‘creation’ in the school’s science […]
Continue readingElection time: Science Q&A – education
The Science Media Centre has just released its ‘Science Q&A’ – a set of questions put to all main political parties. As a voter I’m interested in all the responses, but today I’ll wear my science educator’s hat & look at the responses to this question: Not only does New Zealand have problems persuading young […]
Continue readingvisualising a curriculum
I’m always looking around for ways to improve my teaching, & my students’ learning. (The two go hand in hand. I might think I’m a good teacher, but unless my classroom practices improve my students’ learning experiences & outcomes, then I’m not. Not really.) Part of my search involves quite a bit of reading from […]
Continue readinga response from ‘scientists anonymous’
Rather to my surprise (I wrote the original post quite a while ago), I’ve had a response from the subject of that post: ‘Scientists Anonymous’. This group was drawn to my attention by a friend who’s a secondary school biology teacher, concerned that Scientists Anonymous had done a mass e-mailout to NZ teachers to promote […]
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