The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has reportedly rejected an offer to donate 50,000 free copies of the DVD “An Inconvenient Truth” for use in science classrooms; and fear of losing financial support from the oil industry is being suggested as among the motives. What about NCSS, the National Council for the Social Studies? The video could be appropriate in some social studies classes, and social studies teachers could share it with their science teacher colleagues.
Monthly Archives: November 2006
Kansas science - evolution standards months away
November 22, 2006 – 3:00 pm
Kansas board members and scientists who want to rewrite the standards also want to take at least several months to do it. They hope to reconvene a panel of educators whose evolution-friendly work fell by the wayside last year when the board’s conservative majority decided to adopt language suggested by intelligent design supporters.
Shermer & Wells @ Cato (video online)
November 22, 2006 – 11:48 am
Update: This event will be on BookTV three times this (Thanksgiving) weekend:
On Thursday, November 23 at 5:30 pm and Friday, November 24 at 6:15 am and Sunday, November 26 at 3:00 am …
Michael Shermer spoke on themes of his book Why Darwin Matters: The Case against Intelligent Design, followed by Jonathan Wells, author of the “Promiscuously Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.” MP3 Podcast and RealMedia video recordings of the event are linked from the Cato site.
Kansas School Board member Janet Waugh on Science Standards
November 21, 2006 – 3:31 pm
KS School Bd. member Janet Waugh: “I doubt if the current majority would agree to discuss changing the [science] standards; therefore, we will have to wait until January for the discussion to begin.”
Laird for President
November 12, 2006 – 7:51 pm
Sometime later, I add another post on how I used this in my course (I also used it during the 2004 election season in the US). For now, I just want to share a YouTube video from 5-y-o Laird’s campaign for President. I showed this to my students a week before their presentations. I think it helped them think about what they were going to do; but even more, it helped them imagine doing things like this with elementary school students.
Teachers surveyed on NCLB
November 11, 2006 – 12:44 pm
As we gear up for the reauthorization of NCLB, there may be some interest in surveys of teachers on what they have seen and experienced since passage of the law. Here are a few.
an Idea for Constitution Day
November 10, 2006 – 9:16 am
For Constitution Day, it occurs to me that one way to satisfy the Congressional mandate would be to devote the period to exploring where, in the Constitution, Congress gets the power to impose this mandate on the local schools.
NCLB & the New Congress
November 9, 2006 – 8:00 pm
Reauthorization of NCLB is a top item on the agenda for the U.S. Congress that will convene in January 2007. The November 2006 elections has set the table for what might happen this time around, and it is time for people committed to quality education to begin planning for effective advocacy.
Kansas evolution: 2006 election results
November 8, 2006 – 11:46 pm
Science standards in Kansas will be changed again, in some way that will not try to redefine “science” as a subject that includes non-natural explanations for phenomena in nature. … I will be making sure that a curriculum perspective is heard this time, and I expect that it will make a difference. Stay tuned …
migrating to this server
November 8, 2006 – 11:00 pm
I am moving content from my old “tw curricublog” at http://tonywhitson.edublogs.org/ to this new blog on the WordPress.com server. I had too many problems with reliability there.
