A Digital Analogy for Transcription and Translation

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Ed Hitchcock

I have often referred to DNA as the cell’s “hard drive” – it is an information  storage medium, but does not itself process the information. Recently a student in an introductory course asked how that information is used, so I extended the digital analogy this way:

On your hard drive, information is stored magnetically. The direction of the magnetic field designates a binary coding system of 1’s and 0’s. So let’s say the following sequence is stored on your hard drive:

01010100010010000100100101010011001000000100100101010011001000000100 000100100000010100000101001001001111010101000100 01010100100101001110

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Happy bloggiversary to me

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Ed Hitchcock

One year ago today TeachScience.net was inaugurated with this post. Over the year I have made 84 posts (including this one) which is about 1.6 posts per week (on average – but of course the distribution is actually “clumpy”).

Stats:

  • This blog averages about 30 hits a day, 25% of visitors browse around, while 75% view only a single page.
  • My most popular single posts were DIY Personalized, Randomized Assignments and Textbooks Have it Backwards, though the most frequently hit pages from searches on an ongoing basis are the two that mention drooling autotrophs (here and here).
  • About as many incoming visitors land on the home page as on the most frequent individual page on a typical day.

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Why the corporate reform of education is misguided

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Ed Hitchcock

And so the “education reform” debate continues in the US, with calls for improved performance based on standardized tests, and calls for merit pay and turning over staff of under-performing schools. All of this is based on a corporate competition model – the belief that competition leads to improved quality and efficiency.

This, of course, is misguided bull.

The competition model is profit-based, and requires a product or service. Two or more companies with similar products (or services) will vie for sales of their product over the competition. This requires two things: first, a market, and second, a non-essential commodity. The market may be individuals or corporations, but whichever they are, they are paying directly for the commodity. Fee for product or service – like buying a bicycle or dining at a restaurant.  And the commodity must be non-essential, because competition only works if there is a genuine risk of failure. If one restaurant or bicycle company goes out of business, there are plenty of other options, and even if all restaurants and bicycle companies went belly up, we would still survive.

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Video of EdCampTO 2011

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Ed Hitchcock

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Shameless plug and $1 Movember Challenge

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Ed Hitchcock

This is my second year participating in Movember, and I decided to take advantage of social media to spread the word. It also occured to me that if just half of my Twitter followers and facebook friends – not to mention the 30-40 daily visitors to this blog – donated a dollar, that would be a substantial contribution. So here’s my plea. And if you feel like donating, you can do so at http://mobro.co/EdHitchcock.

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Indications of chemical change

Posted on November 16, 2011 by ed

Some of my students were away when I demo’d chemical changes and how to identify them, so I took a few minutes to record the demos so I could post them.

This is the result:

 

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Socrative: web based response system for the classroom

Posted on November 9, 2011 by ed

I like the idea of “clickers”, when used judiciously, as a means of quickly checking rates of comprehension of a topic in a non-threatening (ie anonymous) way. But there are hardware requirements – both the clickers and the receiver – and with some systems the questions have to be established ahead of time, which doesn’t always work in a dynamic classroom where the focus changes to meet the students’ needs (as opposed to the teacher’s agenda). So I had been looking for an online alternative to clickers for a while, even resorting to a Google docs form that I had to reset after each question. I guess I was looking something I could use to gauge understanding of any question, quickly, whenever I wanted. Not too much to ask, right?

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A Foray into “non-traditional instruction”

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Ed Hitchcock

This year, with the Ecology unit in my Grade 9 Science classes, we focused heavily on invasive species. So after seven weeks of class (we have each class every other day), I think I gave a total of 4 traditional lessons. Instead, we researched invasive species in Ontario, hiked into the park adjacent to the school to locate, identify, and map out the extent of invasive plants such as buckthorn, dog-strangling vine, Norway maple and European reed. We did further research on why these things are a problem, and then (with, I’ll admit, just a bit of prompting) the students discovered that local garden centres are selling several plants that are on the official Ontario invasive species list.

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The Trouble with Content

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Ed Hitchcock

One of the things that nags at me with Science education is that, at pretty much every level, the focus seems to be preparing kids for the next level. I recognize that the sciences cover a huge aount of information, and a lot of background is required to fully comprehend more complex topics. But as a result, the curriculum content in Science tends to be fact-based and information-heavy (read: lots of wrote learning). So how do we construct curriculum such that there is a balance between background prep for future years, and actually DOING SCIENCE?

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Cube Stormer II

Posted on October 26, 2011 by ed

I just think it’s cool:

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