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Florida Citizens for Science |
Women constitute 45 percent of the work force in the United States but hold just 12 percent of science and engineering jobs in business and industry, according to the National Council for Research on Women.
“We’d like to make it not be by accident,” said Engstrom, about women’s careers in science. So WFSU applied for a grant to provide a free, two-week summer science camp for 16 eighth- and ninth-grade girls from Leon, Wakulla and Gadsden counties.
The camp, held from July 10 to 17, is available through a grant with Dragonfly TV, a PBS show that features girls in science.
The mag lab, the Tallahassee Museum and the Florida State University Office of Science Teaching are partnering with WFSU to produce the camp. The girls will participate in scientific experiments at the Tallahassee Museum and they’ll go on field trips to the mag lab and the Saturday-at-the-Sea program at FSU’s marine lab.
This looks like an interesting program. Check out more about it here. And they’re also looking for teachers to participate. There aren’t that many slots available, so if you’re in that area, get your applications in now.
Teachers Opt For Texts Without Intelligent Design
Don’t go looking for any mention of intelligent design in high school biology textbooks in Hillsborough County.
When science teachers voted to adopt new textbooks last week, they could have chosen a book that included a brief reference to the belief that life is so complex that some guiding intelligence must be behind it.
The teachers opted for a different book, though, one that doesn’t touch on intelligent design.
Nancy Marsh, high school science supervisor for the Hillsborough County School District, said teachers based their decision on which book would best meet state science standards and prepare students for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
That one potential textbook - “Biology: Dynamics of Life” published by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill - included a reference to intelligent design was irrelevant.
“That topic did not come up in any of our discussions,” Marsh said.
Science supervisors in Pasco and Pinellas counties don’t think intelligent design will become an issue for them either when they choose their science textbooks.
“We’re going to find the best books for Pasco County,” said Kim Davis, who oversees that district’s science curriculum. “I’m not foreseeing any issues.”
Edison fair shows girls’ turn to science
Female under-representation in math, science, engineering and technology has long vexed academics and professionals. Their concerns have led to outreach programs, mentoring projects and a push for K-12 educators to make sure they encourage girls to pursue science and related fields.
Girls have made significant inroads into science in recent years, experts say, but their enthusiasm seems concentrated on select disciplines. Biology, for example, draws lots of women. Engineering does not.
Women make up 74 percent of the undergraduate biological sciences students at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, said Professor Gary Wells, who runs that department.
“Ten years ago, we started to see an influx of women in biological sciences,” Wells said. “I think it’s a culture change. This isn’t something that’s going happen overnight. We have nothing to attract women over men. Our programs are for students, not men or women.”Yet, at the University of Florida, engineering major Priscila Silva spends a lot of time talking to young girls about her field. Silva, 22, is president of the university’s chapter of the Society for Women Engineers.
“They do say girls start losing interest in math and science at a very young age, but I think part of it is people just don’t encourage them. You just need to plant a little seed. We’re not encouraging the hard sciences enough,” she said.
FAU project finds strengthened science classes make for better students
The FAU project, paid for with a grant from the National Science Foundation, is finding that third-, fourth- and fifth-graders who spend two hours every day on science activities — doing experiments, maintaining notebooks, creating graphs and reading fiction and non-fiction science books — perform better on standardized tests than their peers at schools with similar demographics.
The project, at 12 elementary and six middle schools in Broward and Palm Beach counties, has found that learning about science builds a core of knowledge that students can transfer to reading comprehension and essay-writing.
Studies show most American public schools are heading the opposite way to Challenger. The lack of attention to scientific skills is causing students to fall behind their counterparts around the world. The 2004 Program for International Student Assessment found that the problem-solving skills of American 10th-graders were significantly lower than their peers in 25 countries. Other reports have shown that American schools’ focus on reading and math, in which federal law requires standardized testing, is forcing schools to ignore science.
“Science IDEAS has turned Zachary around,” Donna Devine, a parent at Heritage Elementary School in the Palm Beach County town of Greenacres, said of her fifth-grade son. “He was a difficult kid; he had no interest in school at all. He loves it because it’s hands-on and dirty. Even when he’s grounded, he’s reading science.”
Where do we come from? (registration required to read the articles at the newspaper site.)
Experts attempt to answer: Dr. Doug Broadfield Dr. Broadfield has some good, sound explanations in his interview. Nothing out of the ordinary. But wait until you get to the next article; that’s where the fun really begins.
Dr. Doug Broadfield, 38, of Boynton Beach, teaches human evolution and biological anthropology at Florida Atlantic University’s Boca Raton campus.
Q. Are you surprised by the advent of Intelligent Design?
A. No, it’s a concept that’s been around for some time. It’s started out as Special Creation, and this was back in the ’70s when it first came up. It’s not too unusual. And then over time it’s kind of been obvious that creationists have tried to come up with new ways that are more palpable that people might accept for being taught in a science classroom.
Experts attempt to answer: The Rev. Steve Grohman Oh, my. Choosing just a few quotes to post here was hard. They’re all so wacky!
The Rev. Steve Grohman, a 48-year-old resident of Dalton, N.H., speaks on Creationism up to 450 times a year.
Q. So, you don’t use the term Intelligent Design.
A. I certainly believe God is the one who did it. Creationism is just a little more straightforward way of saying it.
Q. Are creationist winning this battle?
A. Creationists have been able to make headway. People are becoming more and more aware of what the Bible says on the issue because, No. 1, people are talking about it. What we have is the science on our side.
[...]
Q. How do creationists explain dinosaurs?
A. There is an abundant amount of information that man and dinosaurs have lived together. The evolutionist says dinosaurs died 65 millions years ago. There is cave art literally all over the planet depicting man and dinosaurs together. They say the cave art is 10 million years ago. How could the possibly know what they looked like if they died 65 million years ago?
Q. Why is this debate so important?
A. The reason is there’s so much to lose because everything, literally everything in life hinges on whether or not there’s a God. Evolution, by its very nature, excludes the existence of a God. If you allow the teaching of both, I actually believe their whole house of cards would crash down in no time at all because there actually is no basis for it.
LAKELAND
In a wide-ranging conference that covered topics as diverse as Aristotle, spindle fibers in cell division and Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis, speakers at a conference at Florida Southern College on Friday explored the controversy over evolution in American society.Their conclusions: The evidence for evolution is overwhelming; there is no conflict between belief in God and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution; and intelligent design does not qualify as science.
Here’s another submission to Florida Citizens for Science. Pete Dunkelberg reports on the recent debate in Orlando.
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The Ruse - Woodward debate: an introduction to political creationism
Valencia Community College, Orlando FL, 19 Jan 2006, 7:30 PM
Thomas Woodward, professor of religion at Trinity College and Michael Ruse, professor of philosophy at Florida State University debated evolution vs intelligent design (ID) before a packed hall. Woodward spoke first. His first slide advertised the videos Icons of Evolution and Unlocking the Mysteries of Life. Then he flashed a slide associating evolution with atheism in very large letters. (In reality, biology is merely nontheistic just as chemistry, physics and plumbingare.) Then he started with a major theme: there may be some “microevolution”, which doesn’t count, but there is no evidence for “macroevolution”. To glimpse the volumes of evidence, see Transitional Vertebrate Fossils and 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution.
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Folks have been kindly submitting material to me for inclusion on this website, and I am just now getting some time to edit and post these great works. I’ll try to get some others up here over the weekend, so be sure to stop back and check when you get the chance.
Tonight I have an article written by Pamela Hallock Muller, Ph.D. for you to enjoy. She kindly gave permission to have it reprinted here.
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How FCAT killed outreach programs
Soon after I joined the Marine Science faculty at USF in 1983, I was recruited by the Pinellas County Speaker’s Bureau to be someone that classroom teachers could call if they wanted someone to speak to their class on coral reefs, fossils, or careers in marine science. One of my first speaking engagements was to give a slide talk on coral reefs to a kindergarten class of 30. When I arrived at the school, there were 90 students, because the other two kindergarten teachers wanted their classes to participate. I had no idea how I was going to deal with ninety 5-6 year olds, but they were very good.
One little boy though was just “Oooh, Oooh, I did that one time” and about every two minutes wanted to share something. The teachers kept all the other students to one “share”, but never said a word to that one little boy. The teacher insisted on walking me to my car so she could explain. They thought the little boy was autistic because he had not said one word all year (this happened in May). In the previous nine months, nothing had interested him enough to get him to interact. At my session he so excited he couldn’t be quiet!
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Here’s a blog interview of D. Wesley Elsberry at Unscrewing the Inscrutable. Florida Citizens for Science gets a good mention in there. Great reading; go have a look!
DR Wesley Elsberry works for the National Center for Science Education, which means he works for anyone who values science and science ed. Wesley and the NCSE were a driving force behind the recent win in the Dover, Pa. Intelligent Design Creationism case. And he is something else: Living proof that not only can you be a Christian and embrace science, you can actively work to expose and defeat those who would happily cast you or your religious friends as ignorant dopes in order advance the most un-American policies in living memory. I had a chance to profile Wesley and ask him about the recent victory, future battles, his religious beliefs, and related issues. His answers are illuminating; his critique of purveyors of anti-science, who misuse his own Christian faith, is sharp.
Although 20 years have passed since the space shuttle Challenger exploded after takeoff, its mission of education lives on in Tallahassee.
Last year, more than 108,000 people visited the Challenger Learning Center, a $9 million complex on Kleman Plaza designed to spark kids’ interest in math, science and technology. It’s part of a network of learning centers proposed by the families of the astronauts lost in the Challenger. The centers memorialize the special mission of Challenger, which included a New Hampshire teacher poised to become the first teacher in space.
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