explore-blog: Whenever the subject of women in science comes up, there are people fiercely committed to the idea that sexism does not exist. They will point to everything and anything else to explain differences while becoming angry and condescending if you even suggest that discrimination could be a factor. But these people are wrong. This data shows they are wrong. Despite what Einstein may have advised a girl looking to go into science, a new study demonstrates the persistent gender bias amongst science faculty, thwarting a truly equal opportunity. As Scientific American’s Ilana Yurkiewicz puts it, “This is really important. This is really important.” Read it. Everyone may have read this already, but here it is in case you haven’t: Gender Bias in Science. The above graphs show significant results for bias amongst scientists based on the gender of an applicant for a lab manager position who also intends to pursue a graduate degree.
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explore-blog:

Whenever the subject of women in science comes up, there are people fiercely committed to the idea that sexism does not exist. They will point to everything and anything else to explain differences while becoming angry and condescending if you even suggest that discrimination could be a factor. But these people are wrong. This data shows they are wrong.

Despite what Einstein may have advised a girl looking to go into science, a new study demonstrates the persistent gender bias amongst science faculty, thwarting a truly equal opportunity.

As Scientific American’s Ilana Yurkiewicz puts it, “This is really important. This is really important.” Read it.

Everyone may have read this already, but here it is in case you haven’t: Gender Bias in Science. The above graphs show significant results for bias amongst scientists based on the gender of an applicant for a lab manager position who also intends to pursue a graduate degree.

(via Reframing the dialog about STEM education to put girls back in the equation - UMaine Today Magazine) UMaine Today asked four University of Maine researchers to share their perspectives on why girls and women continue to be absent from this nation’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics equation. All four are involved in STEM-related initiatives on campus, and their work informs state and national dialog.
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(via Reframing the dialog about STEM education to put girls back in the equation - UMaine Today Magazine)

UMaine Today asked four University of Maine researchers to share their perspectives on why girls and women continue to be absent from this nation’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics equation. All four are involved in STEM-related initiatives on campus, and their work informs state and national dialog.

Source: umainetoday.umaine.edu

explore-blog:

Mathemusician Vi Hart is back with anti-parabola propaganda and some musing on math class, cardioids, connect the dots, envelopes of lines, even a bit of origami. Also see Hart’s Fibonacci numbers explained in stop-motion vegetables, the Victorian novella Flatland on a Möbius strip, and the science of sound, frequency, and pitch in stop-motion doodles.

Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

10 rules for students, teachers and life by John Cage, who passed away 20 years ago today. (via explore-blog)

At a conference on campus earlier this summer, Eugenia Etkina outlined for the audience her orientation towards learning and urged the rest of us to do the same for ourselves. I’ve been thinking about this on and off since then and this quote addresses one aspect of my personal orientation.

(via explore-blog)

2012swingstates: thedailyfeed: Confidence in U.S. public schools plunged to a scary new all-time low — just 29 percent! And schools aren’t alone. Across the board, it looks like Americans are losing faith in institutions.  Other record lows were recorded for the church or organized religion, 44 percent; banks, 21 percent; and television news, 21 percent. Congress ranked last — as it has for the last three years — at 13 percent. — ICYMI
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2012swingstates:

thedailyfeed:

Confidence in U.S. public schools plunged to a scary new all-time low — just 29 percent! And schools aren’t alone. Across the board, it looks like Americans are losing faith in institutions. 

Other record lows were recorded for the church or organized religion, 44 percent; banks, 21 percent; and television news, 21 percent.

Congress ranked last — as it has for the last three years — at 13 percent.

— ICYMI

(via npr)

Source: thedaily.com

Victorian Synth (by Adam Kaczynski)

My favorite concert venue recently started hosting some homemade electronics workshops run by a noise/electronic musician. They created contact mics in the last workshop, but today they were making Victorian synthesizers. I couldn’t go, but I did do a little reading and figured out how to make my own. The original premise behind John Bowers’ Victorian synth was to create something that would have many of the same abilities as a modern synthesizer, but only using Victorian age technology. The simplest version requires only a speaker, a battery smaller than 9V, and some conducting materials.

I’m not particularly familiar with the technology from the Victorian age. I’m also not up on how speakers work exactly (I do know that there are electromagnets involved), so I’m going to have to take the original creator’s word when he says that the voltage control will have to be electro-mechanical rather than electronic. The key then is to use the speaker’s own movement as part of the input, completing the circuit or breaking it to apply a voltage across the speaker at a (hopefully) controllable frequency. I tried to show at least some variation in the pitch in the video by changing how hard I pushed back against the speaker, but it’s definitely not easy. It was fun, though, and really simple to build. And it’s such a weird application, I have to wonder how students might react to working with it (and how plausible it might be to build an electronics course around noise music).

For anyone that’s interested, the creator’s page for his Victorian Synthesizer is here (http://www.jmbowers.net/works/victorian.html). His setup is a bit more complicated, and sounds at least slightly more pleasing.

Source: youtube.com

GRADING PAPERS

whatshouldwecallgradschool:

Grading papers.

credit: Peebs

I mostly like this blog. Humor and common experiences usually make for something enjoyable. But every time that something is posted about undergraduate students, they have a tone of frustration or shaming. As a teacher and education researcher this makes me incredibly disappointed. It’s part of my attitude toward teaching and learning that most of the time instructors deserve as much or more of the blame for poor student performance as the students themselves. I may have driven my officemates a bit crazy by countering every utterance of “my students don’t seem to have learned (blank)” with “maybe we haven’t really been teaching them (blank) well then”. It took me a while to start being comfortable with a shift of blame that puts me as the point of failure, but it’s one that pushes me to always do better.

I do not know much about writing rap lyrics, but I’m guessing that most rappers do not meet with physicists and cosmologists from MIT and Cornell before sitting down to write. But that’s exactly what Wu-Tang Clan founding member GZA did during the creation of his new album, Dark Matter — a project the rapper hopes will turn his audience on to science.
GZA and Neil deGrasse Tyson team up on a hip-hop record about science (via poptech)

(via npr)

Source: grist.org

Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue, not intended to replace the old one but only to supplement it. The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

A Liberal Decalogue – Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments of teaching, a timeless micro-manifesto for educators and critical thinkers alike. (via explore-blog)

This seems like a pretty good list of commandments to me.

(via explore-blog)

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