How do you know?

This year I've got a lot of students who are vocally resistant to science - evolution in particular, but science in general is suspect in the minds of a lot more students than I've witnessed before. A frequent challenge is "how do they know that?" and a frequent answer (provided by the student asking the question in the first place) is, "they don't, they're just guessing." That's a literal quote, mind you.

So, after deciding last year to retire the activity, this year I am again dusting off the "Black Box" lab to address the idea that science is about just guessing what's going on in the world, or because we can't "see" the structure of an atom, or the solar system, or macroevolution, we shouldn't have much confidence in the models presented by scientists. Where this thinking ultimately leads is to a rationalization for rejecting science in favor more comfortable or "convenient" explanations, such as creationism.

I can't say a lot about the activity, since the element of mystery is crucial, and I wouldn't want a student to stumble upon this blog and spoil it. I'm attaching the lab sheets that I revised last week, without teacher's guide - if you want a copy, send me an e-mail and I'll get it to you.

Black Box Lab - Student Edition

Global Warming & Risk Management

How It All Ends - Watch more free videos

- Watch more free videos

Stress = Silence

I suppose that there are people for whom blogging would be a form of stress release and therefore blog even more when stressed. I'm of the opposite variety - when the demands of work become overwhelming, the blog falls way down on my priorities list.

So it has been a couple of weeks. I have a lot of stored materials ready to go when the time comes, but there are also gaps to be filled, and that's what I've been doing lately. Already the workload of 120 students - setting up computer gradebook, arranging seating assignments, checking on materials, collecting contact information, sending out progress reports to parents, posting assignments on the website, collecting labs and homeworks and journals - I'm drowning!

But much of this work is "front-loading" and will get easier. I look closely at labs and homeworks in the beginning, but after this I will do honor policy ("raise your hand if you don't have homework") plus spot check ("the following 5 randomly chosen students please turn in your homework for grading"). Ditto with the labs. Then the only thing I need to concentrate on is projects & journals.

I decided on a different lab this year for natural selection. I pretty much took Kim Foglia's lab and copied into my standard format, changed some of the text to reflect my own way of presenting the topic to reduce confusion, cut out some of the more detailed analytical questions (too confusing for my students) and voila. Here it is:

Natural Selection Game

First Day 2007

Here's a first day activity based on Dan Collea's suggestion on the Bioforum Listserv and modified for my own circumstances and comfort levels. It brings biology to "life" from Day 1 by introducing an interesting creature - my hissing cockroaches - for students to observe. At the end of the period on I will distribute my course packet for students to read as homework.

I'm calling it a lab, a "getting to know you" activity where I gather info about them, they gather info about the cockroaches and later they also gather info about me and the course. The lab folds in a discussion of the scientific method - observe, formulate hypotheses, test hypotheses - It may evolve into more elaborate investigations, but for now I'm keeping it rather simple, with a limited initial duration but open-ended possibilities for further explorations. The last section asks students to imagine the cockroaches can talk - what kinds of questions would you ask? Some of these questions may then lead to follow up investigations. I will revise as it unfolds.

Getting to Know You.

Updated Course Packet

Not much has changed. I streamlined the course overview, re-arranged a couple of items, included details of our new lab policy and changed the dates to reflect the 2008 Regents exam administration.

I changed the grading policy a bit as well. I lumped together tests, quizzes, projects, and classwork because I found that in a given marking period, I assign radically different amounts of each of the categories - sometimes there are just a lot of tests and not many projects, for example, which gives an undue weight to a single project if I gave each category its own percentage. As a group, they are now 70% of the grade, which is what they would add up to if I separated them out. That allows me to keep the 20% for labs and 10% for homework. Both of those components are fairly consistent.

Course Packet 2007-8

Are You Tone Deaf?

No, I mean literally. This was a fun online music test. Took about 15 minutes. I can't stand to hear myself sing, so maybe that in itself is a sign that I'm not actually tone deaf - I KNOW I can't sing.

The test involves listening to a series of paired musical snippets. Each pair is either identical or slightly different, and you have to identify which are the same and which are not.

Check the results of the study for a nice histogram. Potential tool for a long term study for a student project as well. It would be nice to get a better breakdown of the results - false positives vs false negatives, for example. You may be able to contact the study authors and get more details. I suspect I would do better on a second trial, but I won't explain why - it might influence your results.

Article

Predator-Prey & Population Dynamics

Here's a predator-prey simulation game that I got from Queen's University (Canada) Science Teacher Resources page and modified.

Simulations are always tricky, and depend on students following some rather complex and precise rules, having the patience and focus to go through multiple generations of a process, keeping meticulous records along the way, engaging in the spirit of the exercise rather than looking for loopholes to get it over with, and being willing to start over when they realize they've made a big mistake - that's a lot of conditions for a group of 9th/10th grade kids to adhere to.

To make matters worse, there are two simulations that follow similar patterns, but are just different enough that I can't combine them, so the kids have to endure two tedious simulations during the year. One is this predator-prey game, the other is the natural selection game, which of course involves a predator-prey relationship, but examines changes in the frequency of a particular characteristic - visual acuity or camouflage - in the two populations. I'll write about that one later. Here's my version of the predator-prey simulation. I bought some "poker chips" to use for the rabbits, because the paper was just such a mess.

Predator-Prey Population Dynamics Lab

Fossil Tracks Lab

I revised this lab from last year and added the image to the document for teachers to use. The source of the image and basic idea for the lab are from some now forgotten edition of the BSCS series. It is a set of hypothetical fossilized footprints that can tell a story. The set of prints is divided into 3 sections, and revealed sequentially as students hypothesize about the limited information they are given. As new information is "uncovered" students are given a chance to revise their hypotheses. I use this as a basic introduction to the scientific method (hypothesis testing, logic, etc.) I've added a little section on basic logic - valid, sound arguments - which may or may not go over so well with my 9th grade level students.

Fossil Tracks Lab

Back From Vacation

A few vanity photos from my "torturous" bike ride from Port Jervis to Jeffersonville, NY. Lots of hills, about 50 miles. I've done 50 miles in the city without much pain, but it's a pretty flat circuit around the island of Manhattan, so the hills really killed me...

Starting in Port Jervis - already annoyed at the long train ride that turned into a bus ride because a bridge was shut down. A very hot day with blazing sunshine, but not a hint of sunburn using 70 SPF sunscreen.

Along the Delaware River...

...and about half-way there at a little roadside "market" (general store really) in Barryville.

Finally a few miles outside Jeffersonville, exhausted.

Forcing a Vacation

I admit it. I'm a workaholic. I've got quite a bit done this summer in preparation for September, and I still feel like I need to do a lot more. Teaching and all the preparation that goes into it consume me. I neglect things that need to be done around the house. Other than for exercise I hardly leave my apartment, and instead sit at the computer planning, writing, reading, and so on. I don't spend enough time with my kids. I don't go out. All work and no play and all that.

I know the only way I will stop working is to put myself in a place where I can't work. So I'm going out of town this week to a place where I won't have access to a computer. I've even asked my wife not to bring her computer. I'm not taking books or any other kind of work-related materials. It will be a bit of work de-tox. I just hope I can handle the withdrawal don't find myself wandering into some cheap, sleazy internet cafe in the town where we're going.

Sadly, my real motivation here is to come back refreshed so that I can get more work done before school starts. It's like the heroin addict putting himself through withdrawal in order to experience a better high afterward. I really do have work to get done. But more on that after the vacation.

Final Post on Flashcards (For Now)

Wow, that was a grueling experience. I just finished last night with the last of the 400+ vocabulary terms from the core curriculum. It was a tedious process, a struggle to come up with definitions that were sufficiently clear and understandable without being inaccurate. I suspect I failed on a number of items, and on a number of counts the core itself imposes a certain level of inaccuracy by the way a term is used in that document, which guided my definitions. In other cases the core omits words that seem absolutely essential for defining other words, and in those cases I felt it necessary to go ahead and use the term in question (example: chlorophyll is in the core but not "pigment.")

I still need to go through and proofread some of the entries - I did a spell check but I've also discovered grammatical errors that don't show up in spell check, I've simplified a few definitions, provided examples for a few more, etc. This kind of editing will probably go on for a long time, but I'm at a point where I'm willing to distribute the cards to my students. I'm hoping to get some input from other teachers in the fall.

I plan to keep the google spreadsheet up and available to all, and of course I have the flashcards posted here as well in the sidebar. I may decide for my own classroom purposes to cut back on some of the terms for which I feel students need only a passive knowledge, and focus on those terms that they need to know more intimately. At the same time, I am likely to find other terms in the NY State required labs that need to be added, along with some terms that occasionally show up on the exam, even though they are not in the core.

Problems


--The image cards are still a problem that I discussed earlier, namely the difficulty in getting good results with a variety of images exhibiting a range of contrasts outside the copiers abilities to render properly. It's a big problem that will take a while to fix.


--I priced card stock at staples recently, then looked online, and it's simply too expensive for me to use. So students will have to make their own card stock versions or accept them on regular paper.

Finally, having done all this work, I considering how I might use it as part of my masters project looking at how students learn (science). But that's another post...

Shop Lowes

Or you local independent hardware store. Just keep on driving past that Home Depot, feel good knowing that your money isn't supporting the O'Really factor.

Awesome Science Blog

My science-obsessed son (8 yrs old) just started his own science blog. Go check it out and leave a nice comment - he'll be thrilled!

Snag

I tried photocopying flashcards at school copiers yesterday. The quality of the image cards is unacceptable. Even after experimenting with the output variables at different settings, some of the images are too dark, some are completely washed out. So, I don't know what the solution will be at this point. Some image styles are better than others - line drawings work pretty well, as long as there isn't much text. Flashcard exchange only allows jpeg format images, which doesn't render text sharply - GIF format is much better for that. Photos are a mixed bag, depending on the contrast in the original image. So that means taking more time to find appropriate image types, or in some cases just not including images. I could also make all the image sheets on a printer and then run through a copier for the text - not unreasonable using a laser printer. I really think the image cards are essential, even more so than the straight definitions, so I will keep working on them, but they will take even more time than anticipated. I may also think about making the image cards bigger, which would take care of some problems (text legibility) but not others (widely varying contrast between images makes copying difficult regardless of size).

The second snag is less of a problem. As I feared, the borders on double sided cards do not line up properly on the copier. Even though the office copier has options for adjusting the "offset," which would probably allow me to make it work, it seems a simpler solution to just get rid of the borders on one side of the cards, which I will do sometime today.

The Naturalist

One son is really into nature, the great outdoors, frogs, bugs, the works. The other one prefers the physical sciences, particularly physics/chemistry. I don't have any good pictures of the other one in some sort of physics-y context, but I'll work on it. In the interest of equal time, I'm posting a random picture of him anyway. We're making a lava lamp this weekend or early next week, so I should have something better then...

Last night they both expressed interest (unprompted) in starting a website - I did suggest a blog would be the way to go for simplicity and ease of use. I'll link when they get them running. Only one wants to start a science blog, the other, the naturalist, wants to start an "Animorphs" blog. He's actually much more into the arts than science, although Animporphs is in the science-fiction genre.

UPDATE

Awesome Science Blog

He would be thrilled see a comment! (I moderate comments, just in case).

Obsessive

I could not be satisfied until I got to a logical stopping point with the flashcards. Just finished the image card set for the first three units now posted in sidebar. It's the frickin weekend in summer and I couldn't let it go until Monday - I had to get it done. I need (mental) help! Well, it's over for now.

UPDATE (7/23/07)
It's never over. Just one problem with google spreadsheets is that there's no spell check. So I have to save as excel, then do spell check and make corrections. So that was the real last task and I think I'm finished up through Unit 3. I will make some copies on the school copier tomorrow to make sure it all aligns properly. If not, I will need to make a few more adjustments.

Half-Way There

I've finished half the flashcard definitions (first 3 units), which covers at least half the school year. I'll leave the rest for later. The only thing I have remaining to do in the next week or so is finish the image cards for the first 3 units. A reminder that the spreadsheet is here - criticisms or suggestions welcome. You can download as excel file if you want (file-export-.xls).

I've printed the flashcards to pdf. Students will be able to access them and study online through Flashcard Exchange, but they cannot print from flashcard exchange, so I've uploaded the pdf files to this blog and my e-chalk class page for those kids who inevitably loose the copies I give them.

I've added a flashcard section to the sidebar, beneath My Lab List, rather than putting the links into this post.

Balloon Blow Up Lab

I use this lab as an introduction to the basic chemistry portion of the living environment curriculum. It is a pretty elementary experiment that many children have done in one form or another (Volcanoes!) but they may not have measured the results and considered the chemical reactions taking place or used a graph to estimate the equivalence point (the mass of baking soda at which the number (moles) of both reactants would be equal and hence used up). I calculated their molar masses and figured out that with 50 mL vinegar, that point should be somewhere between 5 and 10 grams of baking soda, unless I made an error somewhere. Please let me know if you find a mistake.

I also added the bromthymol blue piece to the lab, which I haven't done before. It’s optional if you don’t have any. It is added in the initial test (1 gram) only, just because I like to introduce indicators as early as possible to use as an example later on when I get the inevitable, “how do scientists know…?” It illustrates one example of the ingenuity that goes into seeing things that can’t be seen.

I've done this lab for a long time, back to my middle school days, but in writing it up this summer I took some of the introductory text from K-12 Outreach: NSF & Science and Technology Center for Environmentally Responsible Solvents and Processes (CERSP)

Here's my version. I'm getting a little fatigued from all the summer work. I am busily working on flashcards, curriculum mapping, etc., and writing these labs is mentally draining - this may be the last one for a while.

Chemical Reactions: Balloon Blow Up

Flashcard Update

Here's a link to my flashcard home page. You can view and study but not download or print unless you have an account ($19.95). There's even an rss feed for anyone who wants to subscribe and get updated as I add and refine cards. I'm about 1/4 of the way through the 400+ terms and have created some image cards. I decided to separate out the image cards - it's a long story but it's essentially a logistical issue - I can maintain the spreadsheet at google docs with vocabulary, and import the terms and definitions wholesale to keep up with revisions, but that doesn't work so well if image cards are mixed in with text-only cards.

So here are the updated files. Eventually I will post these in the sidebar:

UPDATE (7/20/07)

Cards now listed in sidebar

And just for illustation, here are the (incomplete) image cards (view at "100%" or they look crummy):

Vocabulary Flashcard Image Questions



Vocabulary Flashcard Image Answers

Flashcards

I've tried in the past to have students make their own flashcards, but it's been a frustrating experience. First, getting all the index cards together is an ordeal in itself. Second, students ability to write a meaningful, relevant definition of a term is rather limited - they tend to look in a dictionary and copy the first definition they come to without regard to the fact that, for example, "bias" has a slightly more nuanced definition in the hard sciences than the social sciences. Third, their handwriting makes it difficult for them to use the cards effectively. They are sloppy, fill up the card by writing too large or make lots of mistakes and splatter the card with wite-out or scribbled out sentences - it's a mess.

So one of my long-term goals is to make a set of flashcards with NY State regents relevant definitions that I can print and copy onto card stock and let students cut out and use for studying terminology. I may even use color-coded papers for the different units. I'm also trying to enlist the help of my fellow biology teachers through the bioforum listserv.

I've posted the spreadsheet containing all the vocabulary terms found in the New York State Core curriculum on google documents (you need a free google account to view it). This allows me to invite others to "collaborate." In this context, that means contributing definitions or proofreading or editing existing definitions or suggesting images to use, etc. - kind of like a wiki. We already do a lot of sharing of work created individually through the listserv, but not much real collaboration. I'm really more concerned with the idea of collaboration in general than the flashcards in particular.

On my own I have defined all the terms in Unit 1: Science and The Living Environment. The definitions are from my own head, the images were downloaded from the Creative Commons website. Once the terms are defined, I copy them to Flashcard Exchange, where I paid a $19.95 one time fee for an account that allows me to print the flashcards to pdf. I also add the images at Flashcard Exchange, since they can't be embedded in the spreadsheet, and even if they were that wouldn't translate to the flashcard template very well.

I am sharing those pdf's here, even though they may change again if anyone goes in and edits my definitions and finds errors, or better descriptions, etc. I probably will not finish another unit this summer unless I get some help - it's a tremendous amout of time to write out definitions alone, and finding and downloading images takes an additional, sizeable chunk of time. I also need to investigate a little more how easily I can copy the pdf's on my school's riso machines, which I will do later in the summer - If that's a hassle, I may look for alternatives.

Here's how it works. For making a single copy from a printer, print the questions file. Then turn you paper over, re-insert into printer and print answer file on the back of the the question sheets. They align absolutely perfectly on my printer - your mileage may vary. If you have trouble, let me know and I will make a copy where the question side has no lines. For making multiple copies on a copier, I always make single sided documents and then copy back-to-back from the copier. Just make sure they align properly before ruining a large batch.

UPDATE (7/20/07)


See sidebar for links to flashcards.

Cooling off to ThinkFree

I don't know if it's because they are still in beta or it's summer or what.

First, my initial enthusiasm was based on their compatibility with MSWord. I tried google docs and I also tried Zoho - neither one preserves the formatting that was in my original word document, but ThinkFree does that - beautifully. And then you start to edit it and the formatting spazzes on you. For example, I tried to change the bullets in a single paragraph, but it went in and converted all my numbered lists to bullets. And my numbered lists are a little complex so no way do I want to go in and re-format them in a clunky online word-processing program. I approached it in a couple of different ways, but every time I changed a bullet the whole document was afffected.

Second, I've had some difficulties getting the collaboration settings in order - I really wanted to use ThinkFree in a "wiki" sort of way, and allow others to edit the lab online and see how it evolved. Not sure anyone would be interested in this type of work, but it shouldn't be that much effort to set it up and see if there are takers. But the collaboration settings are not intuitive and not user friendly. Very few options and not easy to navigate to the place where those settings are. Along the same lines, the "send invitation" function was not working for me last night as I was trying to figure out what an invited user would experience using my wife as a guinea pig.

Third, the whole process is still too slow. I have broadband and there's a huge loading time (relatively speaking) for the JAVA application that lets you edit the file. Of course, this might be a minor detail if everything else worked like a charm once you invested that time in waiting for it. Unfortunately, I've spent far more time trying to figure it out than just about anybody I might hope to bring into the process, and I'm still frustrated by the quirks and bugs.

Lastly, and this may have to do with my computer rather than ThinkFree, but on my home computer I was unable to save edited changes. The program just hangs. Tried several different times. Oddly, it works on the computer at school, so there may be some security settings or something getting in the way on my computer, but there are no warnings or troubleshooting guidelines for this possibility. I didn't have any trouble on the same computer with google docs.

With any luck, these are beta problems that will be ironed out, but I'm not optimistic at the moment. I will keep checking in on them and see what happens by summer's end.

Acid Rain Lab

The acid rain lab is adapted from fellow NY State LE teacher Frank DuRoss. As I've mentioned repeatedly in the past, I like the idea of having a standardized lab format, and so I took one of Frank's labs and molded it around my lab template, changing a bit here and there along the way but preserving much of Frank's introductory text and the basic set up. I asked Frank's permission to post the lab and he graciously agreed.

As I mentioned here, I'm switching my labs to an online office suite, so in order to get the full featured lab with correct formatting, you have to click the "Power Edit" button and then allow a painless installation of the JAVA application that makes it all possible. It's a one-time deal. Please let me know how you like it, it's a new concept for me and I'm doing it on a trial basis.

Acid Rain Lab

ThinkAgain

Here's the traditional:


Acid Rain Lab (MSWord)

Paradigm Shift - ThinkFree

OK. I've decided to make the leap to an online office suite from ThinkFree. It allows me to upload my labs and other materials that I post on the blog AND it allows me to edit them online without having to go back and re-upload the files as I do now whenever I edit a document.

The only downside is that anyone wanting to use one of my documents will have to take an extra step to allow the JAVA software to be installed on their computers. Otherwise some of the formatting gets lost as the basic mode displays documents in html only, but you want them for printing to be displayed in full editing mode, as if you opened up an MSWord doc for example. You can also upload spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations. I'm moving slowly on this, and have so far uploaded only one lab, described in this post: Acid Rain Lab.

Plant Respiration

Another lab that I have not yet tried, it comes from The American Biology Teacher (Lisa Weise, The American Biology Teacher, Volume 68 No. 5, May 2006) I've written an introduction and added my usual lab formatting, keeping the basic experimental design from the original article. It looks like a very clever way to measure relative CO2 production in radish seedlings in a modified pipette.

Plant Respiration Lab

A cotton swab soaked in an NaOH solution is loaded into the bulb of several pipettes, followed by several seedlings. The tips of the pipettes are then placed (using a home-made, cardboard holder) in a petri dish containing water. As CO2 is produced by the seedlings, it reacts with the NaOH to form baking soda, essentially removing the gaseous CO2, causing a decrease in the pressure inside the pipette. Voila, water rises in the pipette proportional to the amount of CO2 produced. Remember that the initial production of CO2 simply replaces a molecule of O2 with a molecule of CO2 so the pressure differential only comes about when the CO2 is removed.

In a related story, I'm trying to get my school to invest in Vernier's new LabQuest probeware. If that happens, I may or may not use this particular set-up. In some ways it is better for bringing in the chemistry, but on the other hand chemistry is such a big mystery to 8-10th graders, it may actually distract from the lesson. I could always do both...

Mello Jello in a Test Tube

I had been doing the mello jello lab in a petri dish as called for in the original published lab, but found it rather difficult in terms of materials management and set up. I re-worked it after "can't-remember-who's" lab using similar principles but set in test tubes instead of petri dishes. Much of the introductory material is lifted directly from the original lab. I've given full credit, so hopefully they won't come after me!

Mello Jello in a Test Tube

Haloscan

I noticed the "comments" links were missing so I tried to go to Haloscan to see what the problem is and lo, Haloscan is the problem - their website is inaccessible. Others have reported similar problems. Will keep trying...

Protein Synthesis Lab

I've put this lab together over a the last couple of years. It annoys the kids a bit -transcribing DNA into mRNA and then translating into amino acid sequences can be a little tedious. I tried to make it a little interesting with some silly word game analogies, but still.

I have also been adding some regents exam questions at the end of each lab but I haven't got around to it yet on this one. I will automatically update the link when I get to it. Keep in mind in NY state past regents exams have used both the circular codon table I use in this lab as well as the more typical square table, so kids need familiarity with the other one as well.

Protein Synthesis Lab

Diffusion Lab

I did this lab last year without lab sheets and had students record observations in their journals. I've put the lab sheets together. As usual, I may add to it next year - for example, I'd like to add a section on calculating the rate of diffusion, but I haven't had the time or energy to put it in yet. I may also play around with putting some starch into the mix and using starch indicator instead of food coloring. Still, the basic set-up will be the same.

I've seen other labs out there that use gelatin cubes placed in food coloring or other substances and incorporate surface area:volume ratios. For now I'm keeping it simple. I use a petri dish with gelatin and add food coloring to a well in the center, then measure the distance it diffuses over a 5 day period.

An added bonus, if you wait long enough, is the growth of mold on the surface, which is a whole other science lesson in itself on extra-cellular digestion and enzymes. I generally do this lab after the detergent enzymes with jello lab, so I try to get students to make the connection before I have to point it out to them. Anyway, here it is.

Diffusion Through Gelatin

Summer Planning

As you can probably tell (the two of you who "subscribe" to my blog anyway), the period of time from end of May to beginning of July is a stressed out frenzy of regents prep, graduation prep (12th and 8th grade), prom, final grades, marking regents exam, cleaning up the room, etc. This flurry of activity is followed by the sudden emptiness I feel at the end of each year. It always takes me a few days to adjust to change in pace.

I haven't wasted any time though, getting to work on planning for next year. The older I get the shorter the summers are. I want to have everything in place this September and finally get my master's project finished sometime this academic year - the deadline is fast approaching for me to complete all the requirements for my permanent license. I am thinking of completely changing my topic, but I'll have more time to worry about it later in the summer.

So, rather than load everything into a single posting, I'll be adding a few little tidbits over the next few days - I've got new labs to upload and describe, results from this year's regents exam, some ranting about New Yorkers (especially the pedestrians!) and and more.

i haz ben publishd

Sorry, I stumbled across this silly little web phenomenon, LOLCATS, last night and couldn't help myself.

"Published" is a short response to Michael Kinsley's review of Christopher Hitchens'book God is Not Great. I thought Kinsley botched the idea of Occam's razor. On closer inspection, he glossed over it more than botched it, discussing it in a way that, while perhaps more sophisticated, requires a lot more space to explain than he gave it. I presented what I think is a shorter and simpler version.

Not a big deal and I was frankly surprised they printed it at all. The only other letter I ever sent to a newspaper was also published a few years ago. It was a response to a Newsday article lambasting a day of science professional development put together by my then boss, the science coordinator in District 6. It was a hatchet job that had less to do with the particulars of the PD and everything to do with objection to the very IDEA that teachers should have PD days. I'm still angry about that and won't touch a Newsday paper.

Dennis Miller Has Left the Reality-Based Community

I'm sure this is old news, but I don't keep up with Miller's career so this just came up on my radar as I was channel surfing last night and stumbled on his O'Really Factor segment. In this case, talking about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, he categorically and absolutely refuses to accept that there were not WMD's in Iraq - he does not care what anybody says - not the CIA, not the UN, not even if Bush himself, the ultimate reality denier, comes out and admits they were wrong, Dennis Miller will stick by his arm chair intelligence instincts and continue to maintain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that were secretly ferried over the border to Syria before the invasion. I searched for the transcript or a YouTube video, but it's not up yet. I'll add links if they become available soon.

There's a blog devoted to this kind of denialist thinking. It's worth reading, especially the early posts that discuss the impenetrable bubble that denialists build around their convictions. Miller's is pretty obvious. He has posited a non-falsifiable explanation that will withstand any evidence to the contrary. He has transferred the problem of the absent evidence to another locale to which our intelligence has little access, and further, to a remote time that allows for the dispersal or destruction of the evidence in such a way as to make his conclusion immune to scrutiny even if we did invade Syria and rummage through their stuff.

So why should I care what Dennis Miller says on Fox "News" and what has this to do with science? I don't really care what he says, but I'm always concerned about the mind set that dismisses evidence in order to maintain a hard, unwavering, ideological stance. What's so difficult about drawing tentative conclusions based on the evidence and allowing for the possibility that your conclusions may need to be revised if new evidence surfaces to challenge those conclusions? It just seems so natural, so logical to me, yet an entire industry of pundits and a catastrophic republican administration have been built on the opposite way of thinking. There is some serious emotional weakness masking this macho approach. I can't help tying this in with religion - does religion answers our need, as a species, for that absolute certainty, or do we crave absolute certainty because of our religious upbringing?

I suspect it is the former and we're just stuck with a sizable segment of the population that can't get past it - but of course, I'm willing to change my opinion if evidence surfaces to suggest otherwise. I'm also willing to operate on a daily basis as if I can effect a change in people, if only those few individuals I interact with on a daily basis, my students.

Tacky People are Back

And they've got an early start this year. So far only one pile was seen today in the picture above, just under the 135th Street overpass to the Riverbank State Park. I ran over these but fortunately none of them stuck. Guess I need to start carrying a little broom.

Shrek the Turd

Oh my god, that was the worst. I don't have a lot to say about it, you almost get the sense that the writers/producers put this out with the title (Shrek the Third as opposed to simply "Shrek 3") as their own inside joke about how bad it would be.

Wait for someone else to buy the DVD and then borrow it if you really just have to see how bad it is. A few laughs here and there, but poorly written, plodding, and one of the lamest endings imaginable. My kids seemed bored at times and haven't talked much about it as they do when they really like a movie.

And what was with all the couples in the theater on a Saturday afternoon - no kids - watching the second sequel to a children's cartoon? Aren't there any adult films playing today? Get a life. (Yeah, I'm feeling a bit like an ogre myself today...)

Letter to Editor

I wrote a short, I mean really short, little letter to the editor at the NY Times regarding Michael Kinsley's review of God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Probably the kind of nit-picky little "correction" that would drive the author crazy, but I get that way sometimes.

I'm rather surprised that they e-mailed to say it will be published in the May 27th edition of the Book Review Section! I'll not reproduce it here, but I will come back and link to it when it's published next weekend.

As a public school science teacher I try not to have an opinion on religious matters and refuse to answer students' questions about my religious beliefs or lack thereof. I do occasionally hear grumblings among some students when we discuss topics that are at odds with one religious concept or another. As for religious explanations of natural phenomena, I stand firmly with the evidence and I don't mind making that point with students - if your religion says, for example, that the earth is less than 10,000 yrs old, that claim is demonstrably false. I don't push this idea on students, but as I have warned them, in my science classroom claims of fact, regardless of their source, will be subjected to scientific scrutiny. So if a student wants to argue against science by bringing in religious doctrine, I will engage, at least to a point. It doesn't happen often and I think most students are willing to close their ears when we discuss things they don't want to hear or compartmentalize their brains to learn the science, even if they reject it emotionally.

I would prefer that they do neither, but I don't know how to bring about a change in their mindset, other than discussing the science as matter-of-factly as possible and encouraging them to think generally in a logical manner.

Metro Bicycles on 96th Street

I won't be dealing with these guys anymore. I bought my bike there a couple of years ago. I've been in a couple of times for tune ups and adjustments and such. Today I went in with an urgent problem, one that occurred while I was riding, and they were not helpful. I was willing to leave the bike there and pick up Monday or whatever - they wouldn't take the bike, complaining that their basement was literally full of bikes that were sitting around forever waiting for owners to pick them up. Hey, that's not my problem, that's bad management on your part.

I had what I assume was a simple problem to fix - a couple of spokes on the real wheel popped and needed replacing. The wheel was wobbly to the point that I had to disconnect the rear brakes just to push the thing. I was the first customer in the store with a repair request and it was not busy. They would not fix it on the spot and said it would be noon before they could get to it. Again, I was flexible - more than willing to pick it up tomorrow or the next day. I just couldn't wait around till noon - that's 2.5 hours on top of the hour I had already sat around doing nothing waiting for the store to open.

So instead I cut my ride short and headed home, slowly, probably doing permanent damage to the wheel along the way. I guess given their location they'll do just fine without my business.

Republican Social Darwinism

A Split Emerges as Conservatives Discuss Darwin

They can't seem to get anything right on the right. There are the anti-science crowd who reject evolution in favor of creationism/ID:

For some conservatives, accepting Darwin undercuts religious faith and produces an amoral, materialistic worldview that easily embraces abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other practices they abhor. As an alternative to Darwin, many advocate intelligent design, which holds that life is so intricately organized that only an intelligent power could have created it.

I like (not) the language, "accepting Darwin," which of course parallels the Christian notion of "accepting Jesus." The Times really knows how to alienate its readers. I realize they are presenting the arguments from the perspective of the conservatives who think this way, but how about some quotation marks or something. Furthermore, using Darwin's name as a stand in for the theory of evolution, as the article does throughout, is already an editorial statement. The theory of evolution has advanced quite a bit since Darwin's initial formulation - for example, although the theory of natural selection remains intact, Darwin missed other mechanisms, such as genetic drift, and the entire science of heredity/genetics, etc.

I also suspect a good percentage of these "anti-Darwinists" are insincere in their rejection of evolution, and the wording in the above quote hints at it. They simply fear the consequences of the theory. There have been numerous articles in various publications to the effect that many conservative thinkers actually have no trouble with the soundness and validity of evolutionary biology, but maintain a distrust of knowledge in the hands of the masses. Religion is a tool of the powerful to keep the meek meek.

And then there are the modern-day social Darwinist who think the theory of natural selection supports their conservative ideology:

Some of these thinkers have gone one step further, arguing that Darwin’s scientific theories about the evolution of species can be applied to today’s patterns of human behavior, and that natural selection can provide support for many bedrock conservative ideas, like traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances.

The rest of the article is the back and forth among the different conservative camps, the usual (anti Darwin): "Darwin led to Nazism AND communism" and (PRO!-Darwin): "Darwinism supports male dominated societies." Great, I can already see the liberal backlash against evolution when conservatives start openly "framing" it in that way.

I do like the final word from John Derbyshire at the National Review:

As for Mr. Derbyshire, he would not say whether he thought evolutionary theory was good or bad for conservatism; the only thing that mattered was whether it was true. And, he said, if that turns out to be “bad for conservatives, then so much the worse for conservatism.”

Wow, a conservative who's willing to go wherever the evidence leads - pretty refreshing statement in light of today's ideology-driven policy making.

Take Your Kids to Work Day

I'm SOOO far behind. This is from Thursday. Quite a hectic day.

Everyone had a great time - my students loved the distraction, my kids got to be the center of attention for a day, and I get to worry about covering all the final pieces of biology before the exam!

The Story Behind the Photo-op

NYC Parents has a story on the recent photo-op in which the mayor and chancellor Klein lined up a group of "independent supporters" who had signed a letter of support for the mayor's latest wave of "reforms." Several of the news organizations did mention that almost all of those supporters had formal or informal connections, in many cases financial ties, with the school system and were hardly independent, disinterested parties in a position to withhold support of the man who essentially pays the bills.

The NYC Parents piece digs up the e-mail that was sent to these organizations asking for their signatures of support. They also find internal e-mails between some of the organizations discussing the possible consequences of NOT signing - i.e., they felt more than a little pressure to sign, even if they in fact do not support the mayor or at least prefer to remain outside the political ring (who do they think they are, educators?)

I've re-produced the e-mail posted at NYC Parents below:

Dear principals and mentors,

We received this letter on Tuesday asking for [our group] to sign on. So far, we were told by one intermediary (who is NOT signing) that there was an earlier version which explicitly criticized politicians and the teachers union and that after pushback, it was revised to this version.

We are asking for your input….(phone or non-doe email is best)…

What cost and/or benefit to your school (and our network of schools) do you foresee if we do or do NOT sign this letter?

We are also reaching out to other intermediaries to gauge their response.

Thanks.

And then I can't resist this quote from the DOE e-mail:

Our students and their families, indeed all New Yorkers, deserve the kind of schools and the kind of school system that our Mayor and our Chancellor are creating.

Interesting phraseology. They might have said we deserve better schools, or even the best schools in the nation. But no, we deserve the system the mayor is creating. Maybe one day they'll tell us what exactly we did to "deserve" it.

City-wide Science Curriculum

The city has announced its core science curriculum for grades K-8. It's a spiral format with a little bit of every area of science each year. Schools are given the option of a textbook-based approach or a kit-based approach. The vendors have been chosen - for middle school grades, Delta's FOSS, and LabAids' SALI are the kit options while Glenco is the textbook option. There are also other semi-approved programs for which schools can request a waiver (someone should write a book about "waivers" and their role in NYC DOE policies) and it's also possible to use some combination of books and kits.

For accelerated 8th graders taking regents LE, the only option is Holt New York Biology: The Living Environment. I requested an examination copy, didn't get a good read on it at the showcase. It is considerably slimmer than the national version of the book, I suspect they simply chopped out some chapters and I will be EXTREMELY surprised if they actually re-wrote any of the chapters that were left in.

Otherwise high school are left untouched, and will perhaps remain so. The state exams petty much dictate the curriculum, and short of approving textbooks, I can't see the city doing much more in that area.

Pasta DNA - Revised

I dug up the original source of this lab at the Discovery Channel's DiscoverySchool website:

Building a Model DNA

I've incorporated the basic idea into my own lab and I am planning to substitute paper clips for the pipe cleaners - after several years doing it with pipe cleaners I simply cannot bring myself to cut out all those little pieces again and then hear students complaining about how they don't hold together and so on...I'll update if there's a problem with the paper clips.

I've written about this lab before and other than the new lab sheets and paper clips, nothing new to add.

Pasta DNA Lab

UPDATE

I just completed this lab with my students and I need to make some revisions. I will try to get the lab sheets updated this weekend, but just in case I don't, be flexible when doing this lab. It's "mad tedious" after the first part, and I modified it on the fly. I have too much repetitious drawing and I need to add a text piece about how real DNA replicates, so students have a better basis for comparison. I'll also add more specific materials requirements, such as the number of pieces needed, etc. On the plus side, the paper clips worked just fine.

New or Newly (re)Discovered Music

Delgados – Accused of Stealing

These guys have been around for over a decade and I’ve heard of them before, but just now getting around to listening. Some nice stuff.

Arcade Fire – No Cars Go

Bright spot on an otherwise dark, slightly disappointing (how could it not be) second album.

Cloud Cult – Rockwell

When you listen to this song and think of the lead singer-songwriter losing his two-year old son, it’s almost too painful. And it’s not even about that.

Asobi Seksu – Sooner

This group has grown on me a bit. A little too pretty sometimes, just enough bite to save it.

M. Ward – To Go Home

There’s this dude who plays guitar in the 59th street subway station. He seems more to be playing the part of a musician – animated, dramatic strumming, low toned but passionate vocalizations – not sure he’s even singing actual words, but very into it. This song reminds me of him.

Sigmatropic – Haiku Ten

A short little piece (I guess “Haiku” gives that away) with Cat Power on vocals. (“I am raising now a dead butterfly with no make-up”).

Superchunk – Cool

When I heard this last week on a compilation album I thought, “Hey, somebody’s covering that song by…wait a minute, that’s the original.” And so it goes with some old songs I heard back in the early 90s in Chapel Hill that formed a sort of background noise to all the academic stress. My wife was actually in an art class with Laura Ballance (bassist).

Spoon – Decora

From the same compilation (Old Enough 2 Know Better: 15 Years of Merge Records). Spoon covering Yo La Tengo

And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead – Mistakes & Regrets

From 1999. Still catching up. Another selection from the Merge Records compilation mentioned above.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Weeping Song.

Thus completes my Chapel Hill nostalgia. Can’t stomach a lot of the Nick Cave material, but for some reason this song always appealed to me.

DNA Extraction

This is NOT my favorite topic to teach in Living Environment. Its importance cannot be overstated, and yet at the level of my students, 8th, 9th, some 10th graders, it's all still so abstract and hard to get your head around. It's our last major topic before the more straight-forward ecology unit (and revisiting evolution) to round out the year.

I still begin more or less with this "demystification" lab. The only purpose is really to see a big glump of DNA that came from the students themselves, and to understand the concept of a "protocol." I've re-written worksheets to follow my standard lab format and changed a few details around after consulting several other sources of information on the purpose of the various steps of the protocol. I don't do a lot with this lab. Some websites offer suggestions on how to manipulate/test some of the variables in the protocol, but I don't have the time or space for that. I'm not 100% sure of some of the measurements - I always gave rough descriptions in the past, and converted in my head to exact measurements - I'll have to double check them back at school next week and make adjustments if necessary.

After this, it's Pasta DNA models (structure & replication - under construction) followed by some kind of protein synthesis modelling, which I will work on and post as time permits.

Cheek Cell DNA Extraction Lab

Epidemiology Lab Activity

Even though grades are due Monday, I'll try to get in a couple of posts this weekend to make up for the recent absence. It's been real busy at home and work these days.

First up, a new lab, which is one of the tasks that have consumed me recently. I've gone through three different editions as I piloted it with my three different LE classes and I still want to make modifications if I can get some help - maybe next year.

This is the classic contagious disease lab, and I've made it specific to HIV until someone complains about it. In the lab, students simulate exchanging bodily fluids (also simulated, of course) and track the spread of HIV in a "sexually active" community. Of course the kids then joke about whom they've "had sex with" which makes me a little nervous about how other adults will react to the simulation, but I believe in confronting the reality on the ground - over 60% of high schoolers have had sexual intercourse by the time they are seniors. If I can influence them to practice abstinence or safer sex by demonstrating how STIs can spread, then I will take the chance of a parent complaining - better to ask forgiveness than permission in the bizarro world of public education.

Epidemiology Lab

You can change a bit of the introductory text and make it a generic contagious disease lab.

The part I need help with is a method for determining the original infected individual and verifying the conclusion. My students did a great job of figuring out the first part on their own, using their own logic and methods. The difficulty is then verifying their hypotheses by being able to trace all infected individuals back to the index case. At this point you have to take into account the sequence of infection among many individuals who have had multiple partners - it's a lot of detail to try to keep in one's head, and I don't yet have a spreadsheet or flowchart model for organizing it - but I'm working on it.

UPDATE

I've modified the class data table, making separate columns for each partner. Once you have decided who the index case is, you then use the index case as your starting point and draw lines of "descent" from the index case to each infected individual. If I have time I'll post a sample later next week.

UPDATE II (4/5/07)

I DID hear from a few parents about this lab at parent/teacher conferences last week - all positive. Of course that's a pretty small and probably biased sample - the kids who are comfortable going home and telling their parents about the lab are the ones whose parents would most likely be supportive of their children being exposed to this kind of information in this manner. Still, it's encouraging when parents express unsolicited support for what you're doing in the classroom.

Class size doesn't matter

That's why the big dogs send their kids to public schools along with the rest of us right?

From NYC Public School Parents:

Hmm. Joel Klein's stepdaughter went to Miss Porter’s, a boarding school in Connecticut: average class size of 11.

Bloomberg sent his daughters to Spence; middle and high school classes average 13-14 students.

Just more comforting facts to soothe my worry as I struggle to interact meaningfully with my science labs of 32 high school students, mostly sitting on top of each other in a room originally designed for elementary school. No big deal. Class size doesn't matter. At least I know we are all suffering together - rich, poor, powerful, meek - one nation, undivided and all that. Keep up the good work, Mayor, and please, continue to lead by example, stand on principles, put your money where your mouth is. Show the UFT that you walk the walk and have the courage of your convictions. Don't listen to those loony parents with their delusional ideas - you and I know that class size doesn't matter (wink wink).

Looking for a Little Anonymity

My students are starting to find my blog (among other things) thanks to google and my long-standing policy to use my real name. This has started making me a little uncomfortable, so I'm going to make it little harder for them from now on.

I've erased some of the identifying information in my profile and my posts are now attributed to "mister g." Although a few of my student actually call me that, I doubt they would think to use it in a search, and if they do they'll have to wade through 177,000 results to find me.

I don't want to make a big deal of it and I'm not planning to suddenly become a raving lunatic, railing against the board of ed or my school or my students, but I do want to feel a little freer to express opinions that I don't necessarily want my students to stumble upon - things that I generally don't say in school in my role as teacher because I don't think they are appropriate, but I may want to express on a blog targeted at adult fellow educators. It'll be interesting to see if the anonymity actually affects what and how I write.

New York City Parents' Blog

After several years of more or less officially shutting parents out of the education decision making process, Bloomberg & Co. face a potential uprising. In anticipation the administration is trying to mend fences and bring parents in - it may be too late, the damage done. A new blog dedicated to NY City parents and advocates has been launched. Check it out.

New York City Public School Parents

Lactose Intolerance

Head on over to Carl Zimmer's Loom to read up on the latest research investigating the origins of lactase persistence, the (relatively rare on a global scale) alternative to lactose intolerance, which is actually the norm perhaps for most of human history and most of the world outside of Northern/Central Europe and its colonies, and a few isolated regions of Africa.

The central question is whether herding peoples of these different regions developed lactase persistence when milk became a reliable source of nutrition, or whether pre-existing lactase persistence (for whatever reason it might have become common in a small, isolated population) led people who had this mutation to become herders.

I'll tease you with the data being collected and then you'll have to read the rest of the story at the Loom. Scientists are testing human remains thousands of years in age from different parts of Europe, some dating as far back as 8,000 years. This is roughly within the range of dates given for the time that evidence exists of herding behavior in Europe. So make your own hypothesis here - would you expect to find the gene for lactase persistence in these specimens or not? Now go find the answer.

As If..

The problem with these self-tests is that what you want to do and what you actually have an aptitude for are often 2 or more different things...

Your Dominant Intelligence is Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

You are great at finding patterns and relationships between things. Always curious about how things work, you love to set up experiments. You need for the world to make sense - and are good at making sense of it. You have a head for numbers and math ... and you can solve almost any logic puzzle. You would make a great scientist, engineer, computer programmer, researcher, accountant, or mathematician.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

A lot of wishful thinking on my part along with some forced either/or questions that can't possibly capture nuance and the complex nature of our personalities. Just for fun, don't take it too seriously. And avoid the other "tests" on the page that ask for your cell phone number.

via Evolving Thoughts

Third Lab

I just lost a long post on this lab that I was composing when IE froze up. I thought I had copied it to paste (as I usually do, just in case, when a post reaches a certain length) but apparently I messed that up to and I just don't have the patience to recreate the damned thing. So without much comment, here's a third lab. Just as a caveat, as with the others, it is somewhat untested and will undergo revisions but I'm fairly confident with 3/4th of it - not sure mealworms are capable of being trained as this lab attempts, but it'll be interesting trying.

Mealworm Behavior Lab

Go Me...

Feeling a little whimsical today.

Fathers of non-identical twins have better sperm

Of course I'm only about 90% sure my twins are fraternal and the study suffers from small sample size, but hey, I'll take any self-esteem boost I can get!

Edutopia Gets it Wrong

A recent article in Edutopia tackles the nature of science question. The author, Christopher Thomas Scott, attempts to distinguish between facts, theories, and laws, but bungles it in a way that just adds to creationists' confusion about evolution's place in biology:

We don't yet talk about the law of evolution, because the theory is still being refined and polished.

No, no, no! For comparison, here's the National Academy of Science's definition of terms that should inform all such discussions about the nature of science (emphasis mine):

Glossary of Terms Used in Teaching About the Nature of Science

• Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed.
• Law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances.
• Hypothesis: A testable statement about the natural world that can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.
• Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.

As I repeatedly stress with my students, theories do not grow up to become laws. Think about it, Newton's Laws did not become laws after decades of testing and refinement, they sprang from his mind as laws because they are descriptive in nature - they do not explain WHY or HOW bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, e.g., simply that they do under prescribed circumstances (no external forces working against their motion). Another important aspect of laws is that they tend to be stated mathematically. Since we are describing nature, we can usually quantify these observations - for all the words we use to teach Newton's laws, at least in the lower grades, it all boils down to f=ma.

On the other hand, as the NAS definition of theory suggests, there are many laws that are Incorporated into the theory of evolution - for example, Darwin himself referred to the major components of his theory of natural selection as laws: reproduction & growth, variability, overproduction of offspring, struggle for survival, etc. (Source)

Part of the confusion arises, perhaps, from the fact that both theories and laws (and hypotheses for that matter) are inductive propositions. They both look at a limited, imperfect, set of data and infer order and predictability on a larger scale. From this derives the caveat that all scientific knowledge, both theories and laws (and to a lesser degree "facts" themselves), are "tentative" and subject to refinement or dismissal.

A final point about terminology - "scientists" aren't particularly hung up on these sometimes hair-splitting debates, they are too busy DOING science, while the ID crowd, conversely, spend all their time (and money) trying to confuse people with words and doing no science whatsoever to support their so-called "theory."

UPDATE


This article in the same issue by the same author is a lot more satisfying.

Two New Labs

I've started a list in the sidebar for labs that I've either created or adapted from other sources. I will slowly add to the list as I format them to a standardized layout, which takes some time. I have a number of labs that I created/adapted over the years on an ad hoc basis, usually in a hurry and devoid of an overall plan. I do think that students benefit, if we are going to do narrowly focused, traditional labs, from a standard design.

I also believe, in defense of traditional labs, that they have a place even in an inquiry classroom when done well - not that I worry anymore about what labels are applied to my teaching style - it is what it is, to borrow a cliche, and I've developed and continue to develop strategies that I feel are most helpful to my students in achieving three goals; 1. Understanding the nature of science, 2. Understanding the importance of biology to their everyday lives and their sense of place in the world, and 3. Passing the regents exam. Depending on the topic and the time of year, one of those goals may take priority over others, although they often overlap.

I'm starting the list with 2 labs that I just created to go along with the Hot Tub Mystery that we are working on. For the record, I consider the case study approach to be a good example of guided inquiry, and these labs are designed specifically to address issues that come up in trying to solve the mystery.

A final note about these labs. They are designed for lower level (8th, 9th, 10th grade) students who would be considered in a college course, "non-science majors." No slight is intended - my school simply attracts students with strong arts & humanities leanings and only a small minority are even considering the sciences as a possible career avenue, although many are clearly up to the task if they change their minds one day. Additionally, although the physical facilities at my school are fabulous, they are new and science materials to actually use in the labs are a bit skimpy. So I look for labs that are simple, require minimal specialized equipment, and can be done in a limited amount of time.

These labs have not been "peer reviewed." If you use them and find mistakes or better ways of doing some aspect of a lab, please let me know.

Cardiac Output Lab

Arteriolar Radius and Blood Pressure Lab

UPDATE 3/3/07

I finished the cardiac output lab with my classes and made a couple of adjustments. There's a certain "duh" factor to the relationship if you can visualize the process or comprehend the mathematical formula, but that's just it with kids, especially in this age group. They still need concrete experiences with these concepts and this activity is as close as I can get to a reasonable model using everyday, inexpensive, and simple materials.

I've incorporated a virtual metronome to keep the tempo and the beat for this activity - you could just have a student in the group keep the tempo with a 4 count, but I think the metronome makes the lab a little more fun and consistent as well. I like this one, GiveMe Tac! because it lets you adjust tempo, beat, sound effect. There are others that you don't have to download, like this one: Metronome Online.

Updated Cardiac Output Lab

Stiff

At the end of chapter 3, "Life after Death," Mary Roach writes"

Life contains these things: leakage and wickage and discharge, pus and snot and slime and gleet. We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.

That is in essence a partial apologia for writing a book about death and the after-death in case you were wondering why anyone would want to write such a book. Metaphysical reasons aside, the author also considers the ethical implications and dilemmas in donating one's cadaver to scientific research, a self-less act if ever there were one.

Just to lay it out for you, there are three or so basic options for what do do with yourself after you die: 1. You can donate your body to science and have it subjected to various unpleasant experiences that you don't want to know about before you die and your family won't want to know about after the fact. 2) So you might prefer a traditional, embalmed, open-casket funeral and burial - until you read about the process and the ultimate futility of it - eventually, "the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out," and...well, you know the rest of the song, or: 3) Cremation, and of course Roach includes a rather detailed description of the sequence of events that occur in a body subjected to extreme temperatures necessary to turn a sac of water into a pile of ashes.

Still, all in all, I think I prefer the cremation route. I may be OK with donating organs to save other people, but I don't want my body lying around being poked, prodded, dissected, getting a face lift, or otherwise experimented on.

Dipping My Feet Into The Case Study Waters

The Hot Tub Mystery

SUNY Buffalo has developed a library of case studies for use in science teaching. Many are geared toward college biology classes, but some can be adapted or are already more or less appropriate for regent -level biology.

I've wanted to play around with case studies for a while but haven't had the time or mental energy to invest. So a couple of weeks ago I found one that doesn't seem to require a lot of planning and is pretty straight forward and relevant to the human body/homeostasis unit we are working on. The really nice thing about it is how it brings together the workings of the circulatory, nervous, endocrine, and excretory systems to understand the cause of death in a couple who are found dead in a hot tub.

The task for students as outlined in the case study is to take on the role of the detective who investigated the case and write a final report on the cause of death. In my high school classes I'm sticking with that task, but I'll give them some options for presenting the report in the form of powerpoint, a poster, etc. I won't have a lot of class time to spend on that part of the study. My 8th graders, who have a good deal more class time than the high schoolers due to the fact that they attend school during regents weeks and so on, will have a bit more freedom to produce something more creative - one group is already working on a film that will re-enact the accident.

The case study website provides a lot of information, at times too much information, about how to incorporate case studies into your teaching. The worksheets have questions attached and are available in PDF or easy printing. The basic flow of my approach is as follows:

1. We've already learned about the circulatory system through "traditional" means, and have discussed homeostasis throughout the year.

2. I introduced the case, which is broken down into 3 segments. I started with part one, where students are given some very basic background information and the facts of the case as reported by two detectives and a maid who discovered the bodies.

3. Students research some questions that are fairly easy to grasp, such as the effects of alcohol on the body, what the drug lasix is used for, how the body responds to high temperatures, etc.

4. I teach through traditional means the nervous system, highlighting along the way the parts that are particularly relevant to the case study.

5. Students get part 2 of the case study and learn more information about the case that underlines the importance of understanding how the nervous system regulates homeostasis and how the hot tub, alcohol, and lasix combine to disrupt that regulation. The subject of kidney function and hormones comes up.

6. Teach endocrine and excretory systems.

7. Students compose final reports.

Along the way students are given opportunities to work in small groups sharing information and discussing the details of the case. We are not told if the autopsy indicates drowning as the cause of death, so there may be disagreements over whether they died and then slipped under the water or whether they lost consciousness and drowned. Then the question of why this would happen to both, seemingly at the same time.

Oh, "PS" or whatever - There are teacher notes available for the case studies but you have to be registered and recognized as a legitimate teacher - a fairly painless procedure if your name appears on your school website as a member of the faculty. It does take a day or two for the elves to process your application.

Hot Paperback

The Hot Zone


by Richard Preston

Boy, if you aren't squeamish or hypochondriacal and you haven't read it yet, this is must read material. I'm only about half-way through and there are some unsolved mysteries just unfolding now, but it is, as the cover says, a terrifying true story of the world's most fearsome (in terms of kill rate and the violent deaths they produce) pathogens - the filoviruses (named for their thread-like structure as seen left), which include Ebola (90% fatality rate within a couple of weeks after exposure) and Marburg ("only" about a 25% rate - quite lethal already compared with other pathogens).

I'll spare you the gruesome details of how these viruses kill. It is so disturbing that I don't plan to recommend it to my students without some parental notification in the future - I could easily see kids having nightmares or turning into total germophobes. Of course I read the thing sitting on a NY City subway car surrounded by the hacking, wheezing and sneezing masses. It's an interesting context in which to read a book that could easily induce acute anxiety attacks in more than a few people that I know.

It's not all about blood and guts. Preston is a great story teller with a gift for getting inside people's heads. The parallel stories that go from African or Asian rainforests to suburban DC and back again give you a real sense of how small the world has become - and how dangerous that smallness may prove to be. Did I mention that this is a true story?

Image Source

Recipe for "success"

At least some level of success, as in a passing grade for the marking period at the very least.

I always assumed there was a correlation between completed work and grades but now I have a little data to back it up, thanks to the magic of electronic gradebooks and excel. I noticed it almost by accident as I was sorting grades the other day. Let's get the graphic out of the way:

Sorry it's a bit fuzzy, I'm not sure what is the best method for converting an excel chart into a jpeg for posting on the internet - if I figure it out I'll come back & fix it.(See Update)

Missing assignments are on the X axis, grades on the Y. The general trend is pretty obvious and allows me to make a few generalizations. Trendline shows a clear negative correlation between missing work and grades - As missing assignments increase, grades decrease.*

1. Although it is not an official policy of mine, it seems virtually, mathematically impossible to fail my class if you do all the work. Based on this observation, I'm now willing to make it official policy - I guarantee you will receive a passing grade if you DO all your work. Of course this does not include work copied from a friend just to hand something in or habitually late work (as in a week after the marking period ends!).

2. More work = higher grades. Of the relatively small number of students who have zero missing work, the grades range from 84-101 (I give extra credit occasionally). One missing assignment and the range goes to 72-98. And so on. It's not a perfectly smooth trend, as some assignments carry more weight than others. Some reasonably diligent students still get low test scores and some less-than-diligent students do really well on tests and quizzes. Still the trend is clear.

3. Finally, it's never been my policy to fail a student just because X number of assignments is missing. But as I think more and more about what success means in the real world (It's not what you know but what you do), I'm planning on revising that policy. I don't know exactly what X will be, yet, but I will impose a minimum amount of work requirement from now. Failure to complete that minimum will result in a failing grade regardless of how the numbers compute.

*Yes, I'm aware that there's a certain "duh" factor here. Every assignment not turned in counts against your grade so of course there would be a correlation. But as obvious as it is, I can only conclude that this realization simply hasn't dawned on many of the students who turn in no work and then come to me full of desperate hope that they will somehow still receive a passing grade. So I'm actually using this data in class to have students look at, think about, and discuss what it takes to succeed.

UPDATE

It looks like GIF is the way to go with charts. Click on the small picture above to see larger (clearer) version. I copied the chart from excel and pasted into photoshop (elements), saved as GIF.

How to pass the regents exam

As we pass the mid-point of the year and start thinking more seriously about passing the regents exam in June, a few thoughts on what it takes to do well in biology. I always get a flurry of hits on the blog around regents time, and I suspect they are from desperate students looking for some magical solution to their last minute concern with passing the exam. Alas, I have no such elixir. Hopefully a few will read this well enough in advance and take it to heart.

These suggestions assume that you are an average student or better who can read at, near, or above grade level.

1. Pay attention in class. This is the number one most important thing you can do. If you can't do anything else, like homework, or projects, or studying, then do this. Listen to the class discussions & the lectures. Watch the demonstrations, animations, slide shows. Ask questions. Take notes. Add your own insights or comments to the teacher's notes.
   
   
   Why? Biology is a huge subject. Your textbook gives far more detail than you can possibly take in. Class lectures and discussions serve to narrow down the content to the most important concepts and terms. Your teacher will also try to clarify concepts that are usually confusing and put things into a context that the book doesn't always do well. I also try to personalize the content so students will develop an understanding of how the biology relates to them. You will only get this kind of guidance in class, and without it you are likely to be overwhelmed and confused.
   
   
2. Labs. We do labs for a variety of reasons, but the most important is probably the understanding of the scientific process itself. This is a fairly substantial part of the regents exam, and few people can grasp the scientific method by simply reading about it - it is a skill that must be practiced and that's what labs are really about. Yes, some of them also teach you important content -related understandings, but that is usually secondary and not terribly efficient. You can spend a lot of time in lab and only learn a very limited amount of "content." Labs are really a subcategory of "paying attention in class." If you go through the motions of filling out the lab report without actually focusing on it, you're wasting your time.
   
   
3. Textbook Homeworks. Homework can make class discussion more meaningful and class discussions can make homework more meaningful. Either way, doing your homework will help you get the most out of the course. Or homework can just be a laborious waste of time. It all depends on HOW you do it. Do you skim the chapter looking for the shortest answer to the questions so you can hand something in and pretend you "did your work?" Or do you read the chapter, study the diagrams, and answer the questions in your own words?
   
   
4. Projects. The textbook usually does a good job of teaching very narrowly focused content objectives. The regents course emphasizes big ideas and major understandings. The purpose of projects is usually to bridge the gap and bring together the disparate ideas presented in the textbook. Your teacher probably does this in class, at least I do. I always try to make connections between what we learned last month and what we are learning now. But at some point you the student must jump in and piece that puzzle together for yourself. I try to design projects that require you to make those connections.
   
   
5. Regents Review. If you've done everything else, then this part will actually be a little fun. You will see that many regents exam questions are like riddles, and solving them will make you feel good about yourself. You will take delight in realizing how ridiculous some of the multiple choice answers are and how easy it is to rule out 2 or 3 of them with little effort. It's like watching Jeopardy and realizing that the questions often contain dead give-away clues for anyone who has a little knowledge of the subject.

Well, I hope that helps. This is just my personal take on things, your teacher's list might be different.

Addendum

I just realized I didn't mention the word "study." When I think of studying I think of "cramming" for the exam. It's not very effective and not usually necessary if you've done everything else. There are some things you should know, and if that means "studying" then you will have to include that. I prefer the term "review." Examples of things you should review are the formulas for photosynthesis & respirations, the cell organelles and their functions, the human body systems and how they function, DNA structure/replication/protein synthesis, etc. I still think that the amount of studying or review necessary will be minimal if you do the right thing throughout the year. And your regents review will give you plenty of opportunity to do most of this, well, "review."

Here We Go Again

This is my last post on this issue, it's clearly not going away.

From Today's New York Times article on magical thinking:

If the tendency to think magically were no more than self-defeating superstition, then over the pitiless history of human evolution it should have all but disappeared in intellectually mature adults.

How exactly does magical thinking lead to disadvantages in terms of survival or reporductive success? Evolution doesn't lead to a loss of habits just because they are silly or irrational.

The article does go on to describe how magical thinking can actually be an advantage in certain situations (it reduces stress and gives some poeple the motivation or confidence to do things that they might otherwise not do - but that can cut both ways when it leads to risky or foolish behavior), but it still leaves the impression that if something is not necessary it should disappear from a population.

Update

OK, I just realized the writer provided some wiggle room with the phrase "self-defeating," which I overlooked, since there's zero explanation of how wishful thinking might be self-defeating. Not one example. I can think of a few, but these excesses would in fact likely be weeded out by natural selection, assuming that magical thinking is not an either/or trait but exists along a continuum. On the most obvious level, magical thinking that leads to totally ridiculous acts of "bravery" or daredevil stunts would likely lead more often to death or injury.

Phineas Gage

I'm almost finished with this short (86 pages) book about the life of a man who had a 3 foot iron tamping rod rammed through his skull in a freak accident that changed his life and taught us some things about how the brain works.

If I were to pick a single book to have everyone in my science classes read, it would be this one. Short enough to get through in a brief amount of time, interesting, engaging, detailed information presented in small chunks, and the main story, which is quite compelling, can be followed even if some of the details are a little too advanced for most students. A great accompaniment to a nervous system unit.

Phineas's accident left him "physically" unharmed - he could still function physically as well as he did before the accident. He remained strong, fit, lost no coordination or physical abilities that could be detected. His memory was intact, as well as his mathematical reasoning ability and attention span. However, Phineas was no longer his old self. The iron rod tore through his frontal lobe destroying an area of the brain that is today associated with "sociability" - the capacity to interact with others by reading and responding appropriately to their verbal and nonverbal cues as well as the overall social context in which these interactions take place. Here's a quote:

Humans have always argued about what makes us human. Is it our ability to walk on two feet? To hold tools in our hands? To speak and hear language? To worship a supreme being? The case of Phineas Gage suggests that we are human because our frontal lobes are set up so that we can get along with other humans. we are "hard-wired" to be sociable. When we lose that ability, we end up like Phineas.

I'm not sure the answer actually follows - there are plenty of social animals who are "hard-wired" to get along with other members of their own species. The question itself is probably moot. There is no single quality we possess that other animals do not. It becomes a matter of degree and the unique combination of characteristics we exhibit. The book raises a number of interesting questions that bridge science, philosophy, and psychology. Just the kind of ideas I like to discuss with my students.

Image Source (Wikipedia)

Book Recommendations

I took the advice of the english teacher in my school and made up a list of 6 books that students could purchase at a discount from Barnes & Noble. I ordered extra copies that students could borrow. Here's the list:

The Case of the Monkeys That Fell from the Trees: And Other Mysteries in Tropical Nature

172 pages, a collection of mysteries in Nature. Young adult audience.

Susan E. Quinlan, Susan E. Quinlan (Illustrator)

Format: Hardcover

ISBN: 1563979020

An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

192 pages, written for young adult readers.

Jim Murphy

Format: Hardcover

ISBN: 0395776082

Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science

86 pages, young adult audience.

John Fleischman

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 0618494782

Great Mythconceptions: The Science Behind the Myths

224 pages, large type and illustrations. Young adult audience.

Karl Kruszelnicki, Adam Yazxhi (Illustrator)

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 0740753649

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

304 pages, adult themes – not for the faint of heart.

Mary Roach

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 0393324826

Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story

418 pages, a real suspense-filled true story of a nearly disastrous biological accident at a government laboratory.

Richard Preston

Format: Mass Market Paperback

ISBN: 0385479565

And here's the
Order Form that I used.