At the recent graduation ceremony for students from Waikato University’s Faculty of Science & Engineering (& those from its sister Faculty, Computing & Mathematical Sciences), we were privileged to hear an absolutely inspirational address from the recipient of an honorary Doctorate at that ceremony: Dr Gordon Stephenson. And I mean, inspirational! After the event I […]
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thought-provoking video, pity about the title…
… 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 readingout 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 🙂
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