al-mofhariz

Just wanted to share with you something my students came up with recently...a way to keep track of how much Squirtle was being fed.  Hmmm....let me back track a bit.  One day last week, one of my students noticed that Squirtle was shedding a bit on his neck. He asked me why and naturally, I had no clue...so he googled it.  (By the way is google a verb now?) He found out that it could be happening because we were feeding Squirtle too much protein.  Again, let me back track....when we first got Squritle in January the turtle went into hibernation b/c my classroom was so cold. (yes, it is true...)  He didn't eat for the first two months I had him...  Then with the help of our maintenance worker and water specialist, we moved him from a dry tank to a wet tank.  Guess what? Squirtle woke up!  Tom also suggested that we feed him worms...as Squirtle kept turning up his nose at fish and shrimp that the pet store had recommended.  He loved them...once...

I just reading finished the cover story of the May Atlantic Monthly , which asks the question "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" Facebook, here, is a stand-in for the hyper connectivity enabled by the gamut of communication technologies available today. And the answer given by the novelist/journalist Stephen Marche, unsurprisingly and as suggested by the illustration of a man gazing into his glowing cell phone even as he is embraced by a naked and clearly affection-seeking woman, is yes. Or at the very least, it's not making us any less lonely. There's a lot to critique in the research that underlies Marche's basic claims, as the sociologist Eric Klinenberg makes clear at Slate . What initially caught my attention in the piece (besides the realization that I'd be able to use The Social Network when I teach the history of technology) is that it hinges on a variation of a "users matter" argument. According to Marche, it's not inherent in Facebook, ...

We have been working on learning about Natural Resources in Virginia...including our watersheds, our forests, and now our land and soil.  I decided to start with a real problem...erosion at our schoolyard.  I took the kids out for a walk to see the spot near our classroom.  What do you notice about the spot?  Why do you think we are having trouble growing grass here? Then we came back into the class and brainstormed ways that we could test what the problem was. The science groups came up with many different ideas to test...was it the soil? (clay vs. potting soil), was it the hill? (clay hill vs. no hill) was it the fact that the soil did not have worms to give it nutrients? (worms in soil vs. no worms in soil) was it the fact that there were rocks in the soil? Then the groups came up with a plan.... The next day we gathered the supplies and created our projects/investigations/experiments.... Each group has a blue tray with materials, an index card with the group numb...

A recent dust-up between physicist/author Lawrence Krauss and philosopher of science David Albert should be of interest to anyone who studies science and wonders about how such studies interact with and are perceived by scientists. The controversy started with Albert's NYT review of Krauss's new book, A Universe from Nothing . The book is part cosmological primer and part anti-religious screed (featuring an afterword by Richard Dawkins!), building on a lecture Krauss gave in 2009 that's had over a million hits on Youtube . I haven't read it, but I have seen the lecture, and based on that I'm not surprised that Krauss is regarded as a lucid and engaging popular science writer. What Albert took issue with – and where the bickering began – was Krauss's use of the word "nothing." It turns out that Krauss can't  explain where things like the laws of quantum mechanics or the fields described by relativistic quantum field theory come from: instead, ...

Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort by Moshe Safdie Architects in Singapore. I recently took a trip to Singapore, which is a great place to visit.  (If for no other reason than that the food is amazing!)  One thing that really struck me is the extent to which history, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology of science are taking off there. Singapore has two main research universities: the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University .  Both of them are actively building an HOS / STS / HPS presence.  In my view, this is very good news for the discipline. Among the more high-profile changes taking place in Singapore's academic landscape is the recent partnership between the NUS and Yale to build a joint liberal arts college on the south-east Asian island.  You may have heard that Yale's faculty have recently registered their complaints against this venture. The purpose of this post is primarily to post a link to my friend Hallam Steve...

Hard to believe it has been a year since I reported on the Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology, (see here ).  This year's meeting, held at Penn, was one of the most well-attended in recent memory and featured a dozen well-crafted and dynamically-presented papers from grad students as local as Philadelphia and as distant as Arizona. The meeting was kicked off by a plenary from Penn anthropologist Adriana Petryna, who spoke about work-in-progress on the demise of the sick role and the right to recovery.  I am biased (I have worked with Petryna for a number of years), but I appreciated the choice of an anthropologist of bioscience, following on the plenary given by anthropologist Marcia Inhorn last year. Anthropologists' attention to the life sciences have been informed by historians of biology and the methodological insights being generated through conversations across fields is responsible for some truly important work (here, I'm thinking of Hannah Landecker...

A spectre is haunting STS, the spectre of ELSI. Or perhaps not. Lukas's last post and Hank's comment (including the Winfried Fluck article Hank linked to) evoked many thoughts in me. The kinds of "facts" brought up in Brooks's column makes me wonder whether we will one day see No-Child-Left-Behind-esque standardized testing in universities. I want to add another layer to this discussion of the changing academic environment by discussing how funding might be shaping STS research. The Human Genome Project's program on Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) was founded in 1990. The HGP dedicated 3 to 5% of its budget to ELSI research. Since then other programs on emerging technologies have had similar ELSI-type institutions, including Paul Rabinow's controversial tenure at the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC). Such programs mean a pot of money for STS scholars. I've become very interested in how this funding has come to sh...

I love the Lorax!  I have ever since I was old enough to read it...I remember watching it on TV long before there was such thing as Earth Day (or at least one recognized in schools!) I loved the idea of helping the planet then, and I love the idea of helping the planet now.  So when I saw an article using this book highlighted in NSTA's magazine Science and Children this month , I knew I had to duplicated it in my classroom.  The article, Truffula Tree Troubles, was written by Robert Snyder and addresses the issue of tree harvesting. My class had just finished reading Owl in My Shower which is a great book that also addresses the issue of logging rights vs. ecological issues.   We were already familiar with the idea that there are two sides to every story. Anyway, you can find the article for purchase at the NSTA store and I highly recommend you do that to get the full lesson plan.  The article gives objectives, materials and a detailed lesson ...

David Brooks wrote a column in today's NY Times about the deplorable state of higher education in the United States.  " Colleges are supposed to produce learning," he says.  " But [a recent study] found that, on average, students experienced a pathetic seven percentile point gain in skills during their first two years in college and a marginal gain in the two years after that."   The study that Brooks refers to is a new book called Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa .  (You can also find a précis of the book's argument in Issue 43 (2011) of Change Magazine entitled "The State of Undergraduate Learning.")  In addition to the figure that Brooks cited above, the two sociologists found that, on average, only 45% of American undergraduates experience a significant improvement in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing skills over their first two years in college.    Why?  Because students spend very little ti...

This week, the Harvard Program on Science, Technology, & Society  held the latest installment in its Science and Democracy Lecture Series , featuring Anne Wojcicki, the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe , a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company. The lecture , called "Deleterious Me," combined an account of 23andMe's practices, and the challenges they've faced, with a blend of optimism and fatalism about the future (and future ubiquity) of personalized medicine, affordable biotechnology, and patient- (or consumer-) driven innovation in the health care industry.  Many in attendance, not least a few of the scholars on the panel tasked with responding to the address, found Wojcicki's boosterism unpalatable. In particular, a line of critique running through the commentary centered on the nature of the relationship between the two stated missions of 23andMe: one individualistic, one collectivist. On the one hand, Wojcicki highlighted her desire to empower consumer-...

After we went outside and actually measured liquid volume, we learned how to remember conversions.  There are many ways to do this...Of course you know about Gallon Man.  Have you seen Laura Candler's new Gallon Robot? This is a great new take on Gallon man.  I like how she breaks down cups into ounces as well.  She also includes several games, word problems and practice items using Gallon Man. We use gallon man in third grade and so we moved on to the Big G instead. I like this version for us in fourth grade ...it fits in nicely with our multiplication concepts as well as fractions.  It is also something that students can remember and reproduce on scratch paper for state testing.  They can draw this easily and then use this when they have problems with conversion on the test.  We took our measurement from yesterday and found out if our tubs held a gallon or not.  We were able to use our data to figure out conversions in a meaningful way. We also...

We started our capacity unit of measurement this week.  To introduce it, I had my students start with a problem.  How much water will our tubs hold?   I gave them a collection of quarts and cups for the students to use to fill up their tubs.  Because I really wanted the kids to experience filling up the tubs in small groups using "shocker" real water, I arranged to use our outdoor classroom spot.  That way, if water spilled - it was on the ground.  Before we went outside, we wrote our question in our science notebook and discussed the need for recording the data as we filled up the tub.  How would we record it? How would we keep track?  My students are comfortable working in their science groups where each one has a rotating job.  (Getter 1, Getter 2, Starter and Reporter)  They know by now how to work together and they do it very smoothly...Everyone is engaged...everyone shares the work. When we were finished we came in side and shared...

So today I took my son to the Earth Day festivities in my hometown of Fredericksburg, Va.  While I was there, I bought a new book called ABC's from the Rappahannock River.  by Betty Lewis Ellett .  I loved this book because it shows real photographs of a river system and highlights the animals that live there, the weather that affects it, safety measures (including a great segment on life jackets), and also words like rapids, bridges, anglers and marinas. I can't wait to share it with my students when we start our unit on Virginia's Natural Resources.  Rivers and watersheds are extremely important to our environment.  Can you think of a connection to your classroom?  Could you have your students create their own ABC book for Earth Day? I have created a generic version of the ABC brainstorming chart that you can use for any content area brainstorming session.  I like to give these to cooperative groups to use as a preassessment ...

Alpine lake with wildflowers in Switzerland, a natural environment manicured by grazing ungulates. Yesterday, I had the pleasure to attend the 3rd Northeast Environmental History Conference at Yale.  The theme this year was "Two Kingdoms: New Perspectives on Flora and Fauna in Environmental History."   And a few weeks prior, I was in Madison for the American Society for Environmental History Conference , where the theme was " From the Local to the Global ." What struck me at both occasions was the number of Historians of Science and Technology in attendance.  This was my first time at either event, and I was glad to meet many old friends I had not expected to see before next year's History of Science Society Meeting in San Diego.  But beyond this, I also heard a large number of presentations by people I've never met before, people who primarily self-identify as Environmental Historians, that could have just as well been presented at HSS or SHOT. What's...

This final activity involves making a class river.  The students were given the scenario that they have just been given a section of land right on the river that and unlimited income!  They can build anything that they want to on the water.  What would you build? Students draw a plan of what they would put on this property... A hotel and amusement park.... A school and hotel Next, they go back and add pollutions that may happen from the construction, the buildings, the land use...as well as ways they could fix it. (Notice the Riparian buffer???)  We had a great discussion about whether their picture caused a lot of pollution or minimal... Finally, they laid them all out and created a class river. This goes along nicely with one of my favorite VA DOE activities... A River Runs through it.   This version actually has land use scenarios written for students to illustrate.  I do this lesson every year in my class. And Riparian Buffers - a hands on lesson ...

For my first post, I want to build on discussions about literature and science that Hank, Joanna, and Dan had earlier, here and here . H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) wrote a series of stories for magazines such as Weird Tales during the 1920s and early 1930s, before science fiction, horror, and fantasy split into distinct genres.  He set his stories in old, decaying East Coast towns, not unlike his home, Providence, RI, and nearby small hamlets that he knew well. He filled his tales with plot devices—like archaic, mysterious texts and secret societies—that remain stock-in-trade for genre writers today. His monsters are enormous and sublime; they leave his characters whimpering with shattered minds. Yet, for all of his silliness and shortcomings, like Dickens, Kafka, and Poe, Lovecraft created an ambiance and tone that is distinctively his own.  People have long known and written about Lovecraft’s fascination with science.   Beginning in 1914, he began writing astronomical ...

This activity from Friends of the Rappahannock is an easy one to replicate!  The teacher made five game boards using the science fair type boards.  Each board had a collection of pictures from magazines showing water being used correctly and wastefully.  As the kids move around the board they are given 10 beads to represent water drops.  As they move along the board, they can lose or gain water drops based on wasteful or conservative water use.  It is a great way to show them how much water they waste daily!