BCCE 2012
BCCE 2012 is just around the corner at Penn State University. Opening ceremonies begin on July 29th and the conference runs through August 2nd.
Consumatory Scholarship
Bruce Henderson in The Chronicle of Higher Education calls faculty to be more proactive in defining their contributions to educational institutions. In this time of cuts to education, university and secondary school faculty must help the general public understand the nature of their contributions.
Demographics of MOOC Students
MOOCs, massive open online courses, are gaining credibility. Two organizations offering MOOCs are Coursera and Udacity. These organizations have been fielding demographic surveys to better understand the background of the enrolled students and why they chose to take the MOOC courses. An article by Steve Kolowich in Inside Higher Education summarizes some of the survey data. One pertinent finding was that the majority of the enrolled MOOC students reside outside of the United States.
Periodic Table of Cupcakes
A periodic table project...
Chemistry no mystery; or, A lecturer's bequest. Being the subject-matter of a course of lectures, delivered by an old philosopher, and taken in short-hand by one of the audience, whose name is not known
I have in my library several chemistry textbooks from before 1860, but "Chemistry No Mystery" is not one of them. Reflecting as they do an approximation of the chemistry known at the time, they provide insight about the history of both science and pedagogy. I learned about this one from my friend Ron Perkins, a skilled chemical demonstrator, and "Chemistry No Mystery" is the most demonstration-oriented of the old textbooks I have seen.
Next Generation Science Standards
The NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS are now available for review until June 1st. Science educators at all levels are encouraged to review the document and complete the associated survey.
Effective Peer Review
All academics are encouraged to become reviewers to keep abreast of new developments in their field, to help shape the direction of their discipline, and as their scholarly responsibility. The article has many more details and is worth a quick look.
Migrating Chemistry Comes Alive!
Chemistry Comes Alive! is JCE's outstanding collection of chemistry videos and images. This collection of 1,800 videos and thousands of images presents the chemistry as the star of the show. Migrating all of this great content into JCE Chemical Education Exchange is one of our first priorities.
Rebooting JCE Online
Rebooting JCE Online into a new, interactive web CMS platform is a large undertaking. JCE Online has had a fairly long history, several contributors, and contains a lot of content. The content is typically static HTML and was created using numerous tools and methods. Some content is available only to subscribers.
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins attempts in this book to address some of the questions that might arise in the minds of children about topics with which science deals. It was written for kids of unspecified age; I would guess that middle school would be a reasonable estimate.