Category Archives: Science Education

DonorsChoose Update

My readers have, so far, raised $557.52 and fully funded two of the 25 challenges [update: five of 25]! Way to go! Thank you. There is still plenty of time until July 1st to fund some more science teachers and their underprivileged students. Janet has an update on the entire ScienceBlogs challenge.
Apparently, readers of Pharyngula have already met and exceededthe goal after just two days!
Greta and Dave are matching your donations to their causes.
David and Benjamin will publish your haiku!
Ten copies of SAMS Teach Yourself Blogging in a Snap have been added to the prizes pool, so when you donate, do not forget to put your name in the hat by forwarding your DonorsChoose confirmation e-mail to: sbDOTdonorschooseDOTbonanzaATgmailDOTcom .

BIO101 – Lecture 7 – Physiology: Coordinated Response

Last week we looked at the organ systems involved in regulation and control of body functions: the nervous, sensory, endocrine and circadian systems. This week, we will cover the organ systems that are regulated and controlled. Again, we will use the zebra-and-lion example to emphasize the way all organ systems work in concert to maintain the optimal internal conditions of the body:

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BIO101 – Lecture 6 – Physiology: Regulation and Control

It is impossible to cover all organ systems in detail over the course of just two lectures. Thus, we will stick only to the basics. Still, I want to emphasize how much organ systems work together, in concert, to maintain the homeostasis (and rheostasis) of the body. I’d also like to emphasize how fuzzy are the boundaries between organ systems – many organs are, both anatomically and functionally, simultaneously parts of two or more organ systems. So, I will use an example you are familiar with from our study of animal behavior – stress response – to illustrate the unity of the well-coordinated response of all organ systems when faced with a challenge. We will use our old zebra-and-lion example as a roadmap in our exploration of (human, and generally mammalian) physiology:

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DonorsChoose Update

Janet has the update on our educational fundraiser. People are pitching in, a little bit of money at a time. But….but, where are my readers?! Only $10 so far?! Come on – I know you can do better than that! Click here:
Help public school kids through my DonorsChoose challenge!

Teaching Update

This Monday night I taught lecture #7 of the 8-week Intro Biology course (adult education at a community college). First, I gave them their Exam #2 (on Diversity, see my lecture notes on those topics here, here and here). The flat distribution of the first exam has now turned bimodal: some students are making big improvements and I will probably end with a nice cluster of As and Bs, while other students are falling and may end up with a few Ds and Fs, with nobody left in-between.
Then, I continued with the physiology topics. The week before, I covered nervous, sensory, endocrine and circadian systems. This week, I covered the muscular, circulatory, respiratory, excretory and reproductive systems. How does one teach all of those systems in such short time? By sticking to the basics of the basics, of course, skipping a lot of stuff that textbook deems important. I am late at writing and posting here my lecture notes for those two lectures, but once I do, you’ll see the strategy I took, putting emphasis on how all those systems are intertwined and work together in solving challenges posed by the environment.
Next week is the final exam on anatomy and physiology. The students will then give oral presentations on an organ system each. Unlike me, they will keep the systems separate from each other, and focus entirely on the human body. One student will do the immune system which I did not have time to cover at all. This will be an opposrtunity for me to add teh information that I could not sqeeze into my formal lecture before.
Last week, they also gave short presentations on diseases. I have to say that I learned a lot about Shingles, Grave’s disease, Herpes Simplex, Osteoporosis, etc. They did a great job, all of them. Finally, they will do the evaluations and the class will be over. Later this summer I will teach the lab only, then in Fall it’s back to both the lecture and the lab again.
Technorati Tag: teaching-carnival

The Three Rs

This is my first ever post on education. I wrote it on the John Edwards’ primary campaign blog on December 23, 2003, and later re-posted it on http://www.jregrassroots.org/ forums. I republished it on August 23, 2004 on Science And Politics and republished it again on December 05, 2005 on The Magic School Bus. It’s time for it to move into the new archives here:
ClockWeb%20logo2.JPG

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The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon!

You will see (almost) identical text below on many SEED science blogs because we are all doing this together, as a team, so it is not a case of mass plagiarism:
Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you’re reading the blogs here, chances are you feel the same way.
A lot of us fell in love with science because of early experiences in school — teachers who made science intriguing, exciting, maybe a little bit dangerous. But tightening budgets are making it harder and harder for public school teachers to provide the books, equipment, and field trips to make science come alive for kids.
DonorsChoose.org gives us a way to help teachers get the job done. A bunch of us at ScienceBlogs have set up Bloggers Challenges which will let us (and that includes you) contribute to worthy school projects in need of financial assistance. We’ll be able to track our progress right on the DonorsChoose site. And — because we like a little friendly competition — we’ll be updating you periodically as to which blogger’s readers are getting his or her challenge closest to its goal.
You don’t need to give a barrel of money to help the kids — as little as $10 can help. You’re joining forces with a bunch of other people, and all together, your small contributions can make a big difference.
Who’s In:
Here are the ScienceBlogs bloggers who are participating with Bloggers Challenges:
A Blog Around the Clock (challenge here)
Adventures in Ethics and Science (challenge here)
Aetiology (challenge here)
Afarensis (challenge here)
Cognitive Daily (challenge here)
Evolgen (challenge here)
Gene Expression (challenge here)
Good Math, Bad Math (challenge here)
Island of Doubt (challenge here)
Mike the Mad Biologist (challenge here)
Neurotopia, version 2.0 (challenge here)
Pharyngula (challenge here)
Pure Pedantry (challenge here)
The Questionable Authority (challenge here)
The Scientific Activist (challenge here)
Stranger Fruit (challenge here)
Terra Sigillata (challenge here)
Uncertain Principles (challenge here)
The World’s Fair (challenge here)
How It Works
Follow the links above to the DonorsChoose website.
Pick a project from the slate the blogger has selected (or more than one).
Donate.
If you’re the loyal reader of multiple participating blogs and you don’t want to play favorites, you can donate to multiple challenges!
When Donors Choose sends you a confirmation email, forward it to: sb.donorschoose.bonanza@gmail.com This is your contest entry.
Sit back and watch the little donation thermometers inch towards 100 percent (each participating blog will have one in the sidebar – look at mine where it says “I Support”). Once the Challenge ends, we’ll select winners at random.
Contest you say? What’s that about?
Just in case you’re on the fence about helping the kids, we thought we’d provide some incentives to randomly drawn donors. It dies not matter through which blog you donated and to which educational programs, if you send in teh e-mail you will be in the pool of potential winnder. The prizes are:
Subscriptions to Seed magazine
ScienceBlogs mugs
Subscriptions to TIME magazine
Books:
What We Believe But Cannot Prove, edited by John Brockman
The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney
Rebuilt: My Journey Back to the Hearing World, by Michael Chorost
Blogging in a Snap, by Julie Meloni
Galileo’s Daughter, by Dava Sobel
The Scientific Renaissance: 1450-1630, by Marie Boas Hall
Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference, by Judea Pearl
Paleoanthropology (1st ed) by Milford Wolpoff (gently used)
Administrative Details
The contest will run from June 15 to July 1. Email your entries by July 1! Prize notification will start by July 5.
And, credit where credit is due: This drive was inspired by Sarah D. Bunting’s wildly successful Tomato Nation DonorsChoose fund raiser this past March. Sars, you’re an inspiration to us all.

BIO101 – Lecture 5: Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology

After three lectures on the basics, a long lecture on diversity, and a hard first exam, it is time to turn our attention to anatomy and physiology for the rest of the course:

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Project Exploration

You may have noticed a button on my sidebar (under the heading “I Support”) that looks like this:
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If you click on it, you will be transported to the homepage of one of my favourite science educational programs – the Project Exploration. This project is the brainchild of paleontologist Paul Sereno and his wife, historian and educator Gabrielle Lyons.
More under the fold….

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