Technology in its various manifestations looms ever larger in our lives – & that includes education. For example, many schools require their students to have laptops or – more recently – ipads. I’ve wondered previously whether this is done for a particular pedagogical reason, or whether it’s more a case of "the technology’s there – […]
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the value of relaxed discussion
I’ve written quite a bit, from time to time, on the value of doing more than simply lecturing to students. More than a few research projects have shown the value of group work, including problem-solving and discussions, for enhancing students’ learning and understanding in a subject. I was reminded again of this today. Over the […]
Continue readingwhat it was like at the IBO, part 1
Due to popular demand (Grant asked!) & also because I’m still a bit muzzy with the flu I picked up on my travels & don’t want to attempt anything ‘heavy’, I thought I’d do a few posts about my experiences at the International Biology Olympiad. Overseas, this competition is a Really Big Thing – there’s […]
Continue readingtechnology for technology’s sake, or is there something more?
Over the last couple of days I’ve been following a story about Orewa College’s decision to require next year’s year 9 students to have an iPad or similar tablet-style computer for school. (The schools stated preference is for the iPad 2.) And my first thought was, why? OK, I have an iPad, bought as a […]
Continue readingmeditating on enrolment (again)
When I originally wrote this piece I’d been immersed in enrolments for the new (2009) year. The last week wasn’t quite so bad as we were just dealing with the B semester, but nonetheless, the registrar & I have seen a lot of students needing program advice. So I thought I’d run through some suggestions here, that might […]
Continue readingchoose wisely… (redux)
This post is really for students in year 12 (or 11) who are still finalising their subject choices. While I’m talking about Biology here, the same applies to other disciplines. Deciding at the last minute (ie when applying for uni) that you want to be an engineer is not ideal if you’ve never studied maths […]
Continue readingif you’re thinking of taking Scholarship biology…
… you might find the following post helpful. I wrote it a couple of years back but the points I was making then are just as relevant now. By now some of you may be thinking about entering for the Scholarship exam at the end of the year. I thought it might be helpful to […]
Continue readingthe carnegie hall hypothesis: practice makes perfect
Hot on the heels of the paper on methods for improving learning in first-year physics (Deslauriers, Schelew & Wieman, 2011), comes one by Haak, HilleRisLambers, Pitre & Freeman (2011) that casts a critical eye on methods for teaching first-year biology classes. Today’s students come from more diverse backgrounds, and have far more diverse prior learning […]
Continue readinggearing up for an olympiad
I’ll be off to Taipei in 3 weeks’ time (a little less, actually – eeek!) to attend the 22nd International Biology Olympiad. I’m going as an observer with the New Zealand IBO team, in order to get a first-hand look at how the competition is run, because – – in 2014 we’ll be hosting the 25th […]
Continue readingengaging students effectively in science, technology and engineering
My eye was caught by that title to a paper just out on the Ako Aotearoa website (click here for the summary document & here for the full report). The sub-title is The pathway from secondary to university education, a topic that is dear to my heart.
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