JISHOU, HUNAN — Social scientists seem to have a knack for spending huge amounts of time and effort to state the obvious. The most recent example is from a study funded by the MacArthur Foundation: teens spend a lot of time online and on their cell phones communicating with others, and it’s good for them!

Dudes, like I didn’t already know.

Seriously, I respect the John D. and Catherine T. MacArtur Foundation. It funds a whole slew of wonderful pursuits, like National Public Radio, a really nice oceanside nature reserve in Florida, and many others.

Spending three years to conclude what seems to be patently obvious may seem to be time and effort misplaced, but the conclusions of the report should give us educators something to think about.

Led by Mizuko Ito of the University of California-Irvine, a team of researchers interviewed 800 teens and young adults and spent more than 5,000 hours online to investigate youth media use.

They refute the oft-cited scourge of Internet predators out to abscond with our children’s virtue. In fact, the overwhelming majority of young people use electronic media to talk with one another, or with people they know.

Despite adult fears that all this time spent texting, chatting, and such is a waste of time, the researchers concluded that young people are actually developing extant and new social connections, learning on their own, and fostering their own independence. All good stuff.

November 22nd, 2008 | Tags: Education & schools, Internet use, Macarthur foundation, study, youth | Category: Commentary, Media, Teaching | Leave a comment

Down in the Sunshine State, state education authorities are attempting to hold local school systems to consistent standards of science education, that is, to teach evolution and not creation science or Intelligent Design. Not surprisingly, some local school boards are none too happy about the new standards.

So far, 12 local boards (including Polk, Taylor and Holmes Counties) have passed resolutions that state education authorities revise the standards to include evolution as only one explanation of how life began and developed on Earth. Taylor County’s board actually resolved, “the district is opposed to teaching evolution as a fact.”

All of these challenges are doomed to fail, given the clear results from the Kitzmiller v. Dover court case, which basically sank the Intelligent Design ship in the Dover, Penn., schools. After weeks of expert testimony, the judge hearing the case definitively found that ID was a religion and not science, and thus it had no place in the Dover schools’ science classes.

Clearly, none of the Florida school board members voting for these anti-evolution standards have any clue about the significance of Kitzmiller v. Dover, much less what the words “scientific theory” mean. Science standards by definition cannot include creationism or ID instruction, since neither is scientific by any stretch of the imagination. Who knows what the school boards there expect to happen — the entire state challenging legal precedent and common sense?

January 10th, 2008 | Tags: Education & schools, Professional skeptic, Science | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nevada senior Brittany McComb made a name for herself in June 2006 when she delivered a valedictory that testified to her love for Jesus, and encouraged other students to find Him. She had earlier agreed to leave such remarks out of the speech. School officials disconnected her mike in the middle of her delivery in response.

Juvenile behavior all around.

McComb, who is now a freshman at a Christian school, Biola University in California, became the darling of conservative Christians looking for more examples of the “war on Christianity” and the pernicious influence of the American Civil Liberties Union. The conservative legal group, the Rutherford Institute, agreed to take her case to the U.S. District Court in Nevada, alleging her free speech rights were violated.

The text of the suit is here — Adobe Reader required.

The case has been stalled in the courts since. The defendants in McComb’s suit filed two motions to dismiss, which the district court judge denied. They have since appealed to the Ninth District Court of Appeals in California, and filed opening briefs earlier this month. Rutherford Institute attorney Doug McKusick says McComb’s lawyers will file their replies in January.

The case raises several issues. Was McComb badgered into deleting the overtly Christian references from her valedictory? Were school officials acting legally when they first told her to delete the references, and then pulled the plug on her speech? Was McComb herself at all culpable, agreeing to tone down the speech then proceeding with the original text? Given that schools cannot favor one religion over any other constitutionally, was McComb a representative of the school and bound by those restrictions, or was she merely speaking her own mind?

December 19th, 2007 | Tags: brittany mccomb, Education & schools, free speech, jesus, nevada, The media, valedictory | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ex-porn performer Tericka Dye is still teaching, somewhere.

Last spring the media were aflurry with the shocking revelation that a well-liked science teacher in western Kentucky had, for a brief time in her younger days, performed in porno movies. Tericka Dye, a teacher at Reidland High School in McCracken County, Ky., was dismissed, despite parental support and an excellent reputation as teacher and volleyball coach.

She appealed the decision administratively, but was not reinstated. She then filed a lawsuit against the McCracken County schools, which a local judge dismissed, then appealed that decision to the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

In February Dye withdrew the appeal, ending the legal battle, preferring to set the whole episode behind her. She has found work as a teacher elsewhere, according to the Paducah Sun. Her lawyer advised the “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy when dealing with new employers; don’t volunteer her past life if they don’t ask. She may also be working under a different name, since googling “Tericka Dye” would spill the beans.

Dye admitted to performing as Rikki Andersin in a handful of porno movies 13 years ago when she was young and foolish. As she told it, she was psychologically a mess and dead broke, and was desperate for money. She left the porn industry quickly, enlisted in the Army, and after her discharge, pursued a career in science teaching.

December 19th, 2007 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Commentary | Comments (10)

Last month, my Physics First students entered the Cassini Scientist-for-a-Day essay contest, in which they had to argue why the Cassini team at the Jet Propulsion Lab should pick one of four possible targets for the NASA probe to study. Nationally, about 400 students participated, submitting 188 essays for judging.

Five of our 13 submissions made it to the semifinals, and one proceeded to the final round of judging. On that basis, we were invited to join an hour-long video conference with the Cassini scientists on Dec. 5. In the end, none of our submissions were winners, that honor going to two high school students in Palo Alto, California, and Wilmington, Delaware, but the success we did have is a measure of the hard work and talent of the students involved.

The Cassini-Huygens probe has been exploring Saturn and its moons since 2004. Huygens successfully landed on the moon Titan, while Cassini careens through the Saturnian system. The Cassini team has to decide which targets to image well in advance of the probe’s arrival, since there is a limited window of opportunity to take the pictures. There is no turning around to take a second look!

For the contest, the Cassini scientists narrowed the possible targets to four. Students had to pick one and write an essay of no more than 500 words explaining why the team should use the 91 minutes of available imaging time to obtain the most useful scientific results.

December 10th, 2007 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Astronomy | Leave a comment

The video conference came off well, despite some minor technical glitches and the seeming inability of some teenagers to avoid talking altogether.

We were using iChat on an eMac, with a webcam I brought from home. The video quality was pretty bad, largely because of the equipment on our end. I suspect NASA/JPL has somewhat more sophisticated video equipment. Still, you could tell there were people on the screen, despite the pixellation and slow response time.

Audio was a different issue. The audio through the network was garbled, like those early webcasts using RealPlayer. I gave up on the iChat video finally, and just connected my desk phone to their teleconference line and put it on speakerphone. Then at least we could understand what they were saying.

So, we had blocky video from iChat and somewhat clear audio from the telephone. Not ideal, but it worked.

The format was straightforward. We introduced ourselves (not individually, by schools) and the four Cassini scientists introduced themselves. Then they opened the floor to questions from the students. Each school took a turn, until the hour was up.

From what I could gather, at least two of the conferees entered the contest individually. The rest of us participated as science classes. The individual students had fairly sophisticated questions about the moons of Saturn and the planet itself; the classrooms had less technical questions. One can assume the individual students were more interested in space exploration than the typical student, and had spent more time delving into the Cassini mission.

December 5th, 2007 | Tags: Education & schools, Technology | Category: Astronomy | Leave a comment