A summary of the MnCSE Science Education Saturday

My day was spent in the Twin Cities attending the inaugural public meeting of the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (MnCSE), and I can safely say now that Science Education Saturday was a phenomenal success: a good turnout, two top-notch talks, a stimulating panel discussion, and an involved audience that asked lots of good questions. You should have been there! I expect that, with the good response we got today, that there will be future opportunities to attend MnCSE events.

I’ll just give a brief summary of the main points from the two talks today. I understand that outlines or perhaps even the powerpoint files will be available on the MnCSE page at some future date, but give the organizers a little time to recover from all the effort they put into this meeting.

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Science Education Saturday

I just got the program for the event at the Bell Museum tomorrow. If you are inspired and want to show up, you can register at the door ($10) and get in.

Science Education Saturday

November 11, 2006

Sponsored by Minnesota Citizens for
Science Education (MnCSE www.mnscience.org), The Bell Museum of Natural
History, and the College of Biological Sciences, UM-TC.

A scientifically
literate population is essential to Minnesota’s future. To that end, Minnesota
Citizens for Science Education (MnCSE) will bring together the combined
resources of teachers, scientists, and citizens to assure, defend, and promote
the teaching and learning of evolutionary biology and other sciences in K-12
public school science classrooms, consistent with current scientific knowledge,
theories, and practice.

9:00 a.m. Welcome from Jim Curtsinger,
MnCSE and College of Biological Sciences, UM-TC and Scott Lanyon, MnCSE and
Director, Bell Museum

9:15 a.m. Mark Borrello, College of
Biological Sciences, UM-TC

“Teach the Controversy? A view from the history of science”

Supporters of teaching intelligent design
have used the slogan "Teach the controversy" to describe and promote
their position. In this talk, Dr. Borello will use some episodes from the
history of science to show that while teaching scientific controversies should
be a fundamental part of good science education, the current dispute over ID
doesn’t qualify. The hope is that science teachers may be able to incorporate
some of these examples into their courses and at the same time developed
reasoned historical arguments for excluding intelligent design.

10:15 a.m. Break

10:30 a.m. Randy
Moore,
College of Education and Human Development, UM-TC

“Creationism in
Minnesota’s Biology Classrooms? What the courts have said about the teaching of
evolution and creationism”

Biology teachers often encounter emotional
responses from students, parents, and administrators who are uncomfortable
with, or threatened by, the teaching of evolution. In many instances, the best
way to handle the situation is to cite what the courts have said about the
topic. What if a student/parent is offended by evolution? Can a teacher give
equal time to creationism? Must a teacher give equal time to creationism? And
what about "intelligent design"? An understanding of the legal issues
associated with the teaching of evolution and creationism can help teachers
ensure that their students learn about one of the most powerful ideas in
science — evolution.

11:30 a.m. Lunch

Lunch
courtesy of ADC Foundation

Science Education
Saturday

12:30 p.m. Panel
Discussion – Teaching Evolution in the Classroom

Panel introduced and moderated by P. Z.
Myers, Division of Science and Math, UM-Morris; Owner of the blog, Pharyngula
www.scienceblogs.com/pharyngula

Panel Members:
Dawn Clawson, St. Paul Central High School, retired

Bruce Leventhal, Forest Lake Area High School
Tom Meagher, Owatonna schools

Dawn Norton, Minnetonka High School
Mark Peterson, Dassel-Cokato schools

These five Minnesota teachers will talk about
their experiences teaching evolution in the classroom – how they teach
it, how it’s received, how they’ve handled conflict, administrative support and
community response. There will be plenty of time for questions and comments!

2:00 p.m. Closing
– Please
exchange your evaluation form for a certificate of attendance

2:20 p.m. Optional
tours of UM labs led by researchers – Meet Jim Curtsinger in the lobby of
the Bell Museum

Thanks and
acknowledgements to:

ADC
Foundation, William Linder-Scholer, Executive Director

Bell Museum
of Natural History, Faculty and Staff members

Board Members
of MnCSE

Karen Oberhauser, Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology,
Director of Monarchs in the Classroom www.monarchlab.org

Don Luce, Curator of Exhibits, Bell Museum of Natural History (MnCSE logo
design)

Charlie Curtsinger, UM student (web site design)

John Cairns, Briggs & Morgan, P.A.

The National
Center for Science Education, Oakland, CA www.ncse.org

Language lesson

Oh, no! I’ve been assimilated!

What American accent do you have?

Your Result: North Central
 

“North Central” is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw “Fargo” you probably didn’t think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
Boston
 
The West
 
The Midland
 
Philadelphia
 
The Inland North
 
The Northeast
 
The South
 
What American accent do you have?
Take More Quizzes

I suppose that since my mother’s side of the family were a bunch of Scandinavians who ended up in Seattle by way of Minnesota, it could be I had the accent before I got here.

But no, no way do I sound like those Min-nesöötans in Fargo…no sing-song here, just flat. The test also depends on your personal perception of your pronunciation, so I don’t know how accurate it could be.

(via Reassigned Time)

Friday Filtered Random 16, Commercialized Version

So this is a sorta random music list, but not quite. The new version of iTunes has this “iMix” feature where it will generate a web-based collection from any playlist, so I selected the first 10 from my randomized library, threw it into a new playlist, selected iMix, and…discovered it only builds a list from music it can find in the iTunes collection. Only 3 made it. So then I threw the next ten in—seven or so made the cut. A dozen more…suddenly it spits up 16. Bleh, I wasn’t going to fuss with it to get exactly ten.

So here it is, the subset of a random subset of my iTunes library that Apple thought they could make a few bucks off of. In theory, if you click on that link, it’s supposed to take you to your copy of iTunes with all these tracks listed, ready for you to play a preview or buy them from Apple.

This Devil’s Workday Modest Mouse
Wasteland of the Free Iris DeMent
Heart Shaped Box Nirvana
Come As You Are Nirvana
Fidelity Regina Spektor
Mylardatter Sorten Muld
Glory Bound Train #1 Roy Zimmerman
White & Nerdy (Parody of "Ridin’" By Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone) "Weird Al" Yankovic
I’m Not Worried at All Moby
Suddenly I See KT Tunstall
Hot Hot Hot!!! The Cure
Captain Badass Songs: Ohia
Coming in from the Cold The Delgados
Blade of Grass Asylum Street Spankers
Guitar Flute & String Moby
Little Bird Annie Lennox

I don’t know that I’ll do this again. It also comes back with an html-formatted email that I could have just pasted in, but it was ugly code, so I had to strip out some of the gunk just to make it presentable. I don’t think it was really worth it.

Oh. So we lost after all.

According to the mealy-mouthed Jim Wallis, anyway, the recent election was a defeat for the religious extremists and the secular Left, and a great victory for moderate and conservative Christians. Fortunately, we’ve got Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden to administer a corrective, or I’d have to throw a snit and go start piling faggots for the long-postponed atheist revolution. Since they’ve got it under control, I guess I can let it pass. This time.

But Wallis does join Amy Sullivan on The List.