I just spent a day at MICDS in St. Louis talking with a small but select group of teachers about creativity in teaching, the role of big ideas, the meaning of TPACK, the importance of trans-disciplinary learning (among other things). What a wonderful way of spending...
Posts related to: Biology
Going cuckoo!
Three different news-stories/articles came to my notice today all connected by the infamous brood parasite the cuckoo. The first is a part of Olivia Judson's blog (on the NYTimes) on biology and life (read Cuckoo! Cuckoo! here), the second is is about how scientists...
Education in an evolutionary perspective
I just discovered Peter O. Gray's blog on Psychology Today, titled Freedom to Learn: The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning. This is an awesome blog and really worth reading. Here are two of his posts that I strongly recommend. The first states...
A brief history…
... um... pretty much everything, rendered as a 2100 page-long flipbook. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNYZH9kuaYM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
For Sean & his students
Sean had this wonderful post on his blog (Is this a sluggish strategy?) about this whole scientific and mathematical poetry that is going around. He links to some excellent sci-po's written by his students (see Pushing Scientific Thought Into Art) and also provides a...
Nature v.s. nurture, what are we missing
Jordy Whitmer over at the Birmingham School district forwarded me this link to this really cool video by George Kembel on Awakening Creativity. There is a lot in the video to ponder and discuss but I want to focus on something he said about music learning that really...
Darwin film can’t find distributor
Telegraph article titled: Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America' How sad is that!
Mind power: Brain Machine Interfaces
Imagine controlling machines, typing text or juggling balls using nothing but the power of thought. What sounds like far-fetched science fiction is gradually becoming possible, providing hope for disabled patients -- and new gimmicks for the computer gaming industry....
Bringing sensory richness to bleak scientific texts
A while ago I had written about how we use language to capture intangible ideas - and the risks associated with not paying attention to these intangibles. I had said (though you can read the complete post A different language): For instance wine connoisseurs have...
Correlates of creativity
Just came across this on the Ph.D. design list (a listserv for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design) from a posting by Charles Burnette. He quotes Donald MacKinnon, author of a large study on creativity in the arts, sciences and professions: If I...
Representing DNA as code
What does it mean to represent something? Sean Nash (of Nashworld) and I have been having some fun at the expense of periodic representations (my post and his response) and even children's books. I had been wanting to write about this for the past few days but travel,...
Darwin Day & A new Gallup Poll
Charles Darwin 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882 On this day, it is sobering to read the results of the latest Gallup Poll: On Darwin’s Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in EvolutionOn the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, a new Gallup Poll shows...
On messing with your mind
A fascinating series of illusions to reveal just how complicated a phenomenon perception is. I was particularly impressed by the "rubber hand" illusion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtbcgBWobA
Of hernias and hiccups, the evolutionary story
Interesting article in Scientific American about how flaws in our biology reveal our evolutionary history. Steven Gould talked about it in his famous essay on The Panda's Thumb. This is a wonderful argument for Darwinian evolution since it points not to perfection...
The role of Vitamin D in beta-cell function
Who says scientists can't have fun. I just discovered a series of videos on (where else) YouTube about scientists expressing their doctoral research through dance!!! What can be cooler than that? Check out one of the winners: The role of Vitamin D in beta-cell...
Personality analysis of my blog
As you know I am always intrigued by a new breed to personality analysis tools that are out there in the world (for instance see these prior postings: on PersonalDNA; on Color IQ; and browsing for gender). So here is this new website that seeks to analyze me by...
It takes 10,000 hours
A quote in a NYTimes article caught my attention According to sports scientists, the most significant predictor of an athlete’s skill is the time spent in practice. “It’s not just genetics,” says Jean Côté, the director of the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies...
Cyborgs are us!
Are we becoming cyborgs? William Saletan has a recent article in Slate titled Full Metal Socket about this issue. As he says: Cyborgs aren't studs from the future. They're old folks. As we age, our parts wear out. That used to mean immobility or death. Today, we can...
An IQ test for color
If there is an IQ test for everything, why not one for color. This is Howard Gardner multiple intelligences run rampant. Check out the Color IQ test. BTW, my score was 27 (where 0 is a perfect score and 99 is as bad as you can get!). Irrespective of what you think of...
The gullibility of experts
Does it matter whether a brownie is served on a paper plate or on china? Is the Patagonian Toothfish less tasty than the Chilean Bass? In an earlier posting (perception of taste) I had cited research showing that wine with an expensive price tag was judged to be...
Creepy
How do you react to this flash animation? I don't know about you but it completely creeped me out. My reaction is almost visceral in its intensity... It is one thing to read an an article speaking to our fear of snakes and spiders that "Certainly there are certain...
Mirror, mirror
Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass? A recent article in the NYTimes (Mirrors...
Finding humor in play
Learning through play has been an important part of my philosophy of teaching (and learning). In fact I have argued that play is far more important than games (though games have been receiving a great deal of educational interest lately). [You can read a previous...
Digital convergence…
A few years ago Sachin Kalbag, then at Digit, contacted me to write an article for a special for the magazine's fourth anniversary issue. The topic at hand was Digital Convergence, what it is, and what does it mean for our future? Other authors who would be writing in...
Slipping into uncanny valley
MindHacks has a great post related to some of my previous postings about anthropomorphizing interactive artifacts (see here and here) - just that this time these artifacts under discussion are robots. As it turns out, sometime too much similarity between humans and...
When does the brain make up YOUR mind?
When does the brain make up YOUR mind? Does this question make any sense? Anyway, this was prompted by an article that showed that "Researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making...
Religious & Magical Thinking, the Darwinian way
Two interesting articles about religions and magical thinking. The first from the Economist is about how scientists are attempting to explain religion in evolutionary terms. As the article says, "religion cries out for a biological explanation," though previous...
East Lansing in the NYTimes
Olivia Judson has a great column in the NYTimes about evolution. Today's column titled "Stop the mutants" is a thought experiment on how evolution would fare if all mutations were to magically stop. It is an interesting article, and in keeping with her previous...
Seeing patterns with eyes closed
Oliver Sacks has a fascinating piece in today's NYTimes (titled Patterns, as a part of his NYTimes blog, Migranes, perspective on a headache). Oliver Sacks describes the visual auras he has suffered through his life as follows: tiny branching lines, like twigs, or...
The medium is the massage
Nicholas Carr has an interesting post (titled Rewiring the mind) on the findings of a recent study into the information seeking behaviors of scholars. (The full study in pdf format can be downloaded here.) Carr seems to suggest that these results indicate a...