When I introduce evolution in class, I tell my students that the strongest evidence that Darwin was right is the success of modern biology. Evolution …
Better Gene Discovery Through Evolutionary ReasoningRead More
SimUText Ecology
Replace your ecology textbook If you've been following our blog, you've seen me make several posts about e-textbooks. One reason I've been following …
The Talented Dr. Fox, Part 2
The Role of Charisma in Teaching In an earlier post, I wrote about a classic paper from the education literature called The Dr. Fox Lecture: A …
Majors vs. Non-majors
Most universities have separate biology classes for non-majors, which are often taken by students who need to fulfill a "science" requirement to …
Lower-Order Thinking & Allocating Limited Brainpower
I'm reading two different documents now which are both, in a way, about testing, but at opposite levels of thinking. The first is the National …
Lower-Order Thinking & Allocating Limited BrainpowerRead More
Can a Number Be Both Even and Odd?
Discuss. I wrote a few weeks ago about a math teacher and professor that was profiled in the NY Times magazine for showing that teachers who know and …
Science Standards in Real Classrooms
Every state has a set of science standards that are supposed to guide what is taught at different grade levels in their schools. Many of these are …
49 steps to great teaching
There is a fascinating article in the NY Times magazine this week about what techniques make a good teacher in primary and secondary schools. Teachers …
What price for a hardcover electronic book?
The CEO of one of the major publishers, Macmillan, had a bit of foot in mouth disease in a blog post a couple of days ago when he explained that his …
