This week, we see Appa and SteelyKid with all the essential elements of bedtime: From right to left, we have: Goodnight Moon, the Winnie-the-Pooh collection I’ve started reading to her after her bottle, and the brown-and-white doggie she has adopted as her essential comfort animal. This was apparently a Valentine’s Day promotion from some chain… Continue reading Thursday Bedtime Blogging
Author: Chad Orzel
DonorsChoose Reminder: Tuckerize Your Pets, and Program This Blog
I haven’t been flogging the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge as hard this year as in past year, but I do want to post a reminder that the challenge is ongoing. If you donate, the money will go to help deserving school kids; if that’s not enough, it can also earn you cool stuff like: The largest… Continue reading DonorsChoose Reminder: Tuckerize Your Pets, and Program This Blog
Teaching, Research, and Teaching Research
Melissa at Confused at a Higher Level has a nice post on the tension between faculty research and teaching: Malachowski writes, “We all know that working with undergraduates is time consuming and in some cases it slows down our research output, but work with undergraduates should be supported, celebrated, and compensated at a high level.… Continue reading Teaching, Research, and Teaching Research
Links for 2010-10-21
Views: The Real Cost Equation – Inside Higher Ed “All of these arguments place the higher education system at the center of the universe worth examining. Holding up a magnifying glass to the industry can indeed yield a wealth of detailed information, but without context that information is partial, and it can be quite misleading.… Continue reading Links for 2010-10-21
Poll: The Peter Threshold
As a sort of follow-up to yesterday’s post asking about incompetent teachers, a poll on what you might call the “Peter Threshold,” after the Peter Principle. Exactly how many incompetent members can an organization tolerate? The acceptable level of incompetence in any organization (that is, the fraction of employees who can’t do their jobs) is:Market… Continue reading Poll: The Peter Threshold
Links for 2010-10-20
In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Green Energy – Series – NYTimes.com The power of framing in action. (tags: science politics environment energy society culture religion media communication nytimes) Physics Buzz: Twin Paradox a Paradox in Low-Earth Orbit “Relativity enthusiasts will be excited to learn that in a few months, twin brothers will meet in space… Continue reading Links for 2010-10-20
How Many Incompetent Teachers Are There, Really?
As mentioned in the previous post, there has been a lot of interesting stuff written about education in the last week or so, much of it in response to the manifesto published in the Washington Post, which is the usual union-busting line about how it’s too difficult to fire the incompetent teachers who are ruining… Continue reading How Many Incompetent Teachers Are There, Really?
“Line Plot” is Never the Right Choice (Why Excel Sucks, aleph-nought in a series)
There have been a bunch of interesting things written about education recently that I’ve been too busy teaching to comment on. I was pulling them together this morning to do a sort of themed links dump, when the plot at the right, from Kevin Drum’s post about school testing jumped out at me. This shows… Continue reading “Line Plot” is Never the Right Choice (Why Excel Sucks, aleph-nought in a series)
Links for 2010-10-19
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Tossing Bottles One of the staples of 80’s teen movies was the moment when the screwup hero realized that he had imbibed (or allowed others to imbibe at a forbidden party) much of what was in the parents’ liquor cabinet — these houses always had well-stocked liquor cabinets —… Continue reading Links for 2010-10-19
How to Teach Physics to [Your Pet’s Name Here] (DonorsChoose Challege 2010)
As you may or may not be aware, we are once again in the middle of a DonorsChoose fundraiser to support public school students and teachers. The good news is, the Uncertain Principles entry for the 2010 Challenge is in second place among ScienceBlogs blogs with $373 in donations thus far; the bad news it… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to [Your Pet’s Name Here] (DonorsChoose Challege 2010)