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Underground > Laboratory >

Teaching Science

23:44 / 03.08.02

At the end of this month, I begin graduate school, and become a teacher's assistant. I'm not sure of what my duties are, but I gather that it will either involve leading discussion groups on the lecture portion of a class, or teaching the lab section of a class.

I want to do an exceptional job at this. So, I was wondering, what did your favorite science teachers do to keep you entertained while they were filling your head with all sorts of important information?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

13:28 / 04.08.02

What level will you be teaching? What kind of stuff?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:25 / 04.08.02

So, I was wondering, what did your favorite science teachers do to keep you entertained while they were filling your head with all sorts of important information?

Drop lumps of sodium in buckets of water. We had hours of fun. And give us chemical burns- no, wait, that was Fight Club.

15:50 / 04.08.02

Pretty chemicals. Making the bunsen burner flame change colour by holding something with certain chemicals on it into the flame. And setting fire to strips of magnesium (it is magnesium that kind of goes up like a sparkler, right?).

18:29 / 04.08.02

Pretty chemicals, oh yes!! And have the full explanation of why the pretty is so pretty. (And if you ever run across how phosphorescence works - what gives it the time delay that fluorescence doesn't have - let me know!!)

The other thing that will (or should, anyway) make an impression on young minds is topical news items - pros and cons to "frankenfoods" and engineered nutriceuticals, global warming, gene therapy, et cetera. It may be heresy in a science class for youngsters to stress that science is a method rather than The One True Answer, but the teachers who promoted discussion and thought always made an impression on me.

09:03 / 05.08.02

Actually, I'll be teaching Biology. This will probably take the form of Molecular Biology, but some people get stuck with subjects like Plant Physiology as well. So, I probably won't have the opportunity to distribute chemical burns or create magnesium explosions. That sort of excitement is generally considered to be within the realm of chemistry. However, I will confess that there is something really appealing about jumping for cover while setting off a chemical explosive, and screaming, "Fire in the hole!"

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:56 / 05.08.02

Oh biology, then you show them all how to become Jason Woodrue- The Fluoronic Man then.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:57 / 05.08.02

But seriously, the Frankenfoods angle might be a good one to take...

01:22 / 06.08.02

I've only noticed two things that consistently make a good teacher. Know the subject damned well and consistently get feedback from the students.

Knowing the subject very well also means knowing which bits of knowledge are most important. A textbook can be several hundred pages long, so a teacher has to be able to point out the most important facts that will make the rest fall together.

I've had teachers with fairly dull personalities, but from whom I still learned a great deal.

I've had very nice teachers who weren't able to answer any questions they didn't expect us to ask.

Teaching using fun, interactive techniques can be very helpful, but it is important not to waste the students time with things that are fun and interactive, but don't teach them much about the subject.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:51 / 06.08.02

If you've got the time, why not get them to help you design your curriculum? Sort of along the lines of, 'this is what you have to learn, what for you would be the most interesting ways to do it, bearing in mind we have a limited time, budget, blah blah blah.' If they have some stake in the style of their education they might then be more willing to learn.

19:10 / 07.08.02

Don't forget the time-honoured teaching method: Field Trip! Two words that get any class twitching in their seats, eager to get out and about, vying with each other as to who can get lost first and who gets to ride home in the ambulance with the lights on and the siren blaring (it was never me. *sniff*). Seeing as biology is all around us, you can go as far as a National Park or as close as that little plot of grass next to the bicycle shed.

15:44 / 08.08.02

have a good voice while speaking, never talk down to students, give vivid but clear examples of what you are trying to illustrate. never show fear students, can smell fear from miles away.

15:46 / 13.08.02

Molecular bio... would you get in trouble for having a "drugs" mod? A couple weeks spent describing how mushroom molecules can trigger religious states in the brain would definitely get my interest.

It might also be fun IF you could set it up to introduce concepts of molecular research and its indirectness somehow by putting together a kind of chain-reaction game. Not sure what shape it could take, and it might be more work than it's worth, but I've always been fascinated with the idea of the chains of reactions that go in bodies, and the very indirect way we have of observing some of these reactions. The use of logic in fitting different weird shapes together....

19:42 / 13.08.02

I have no advice to give, really (except that my cultural studies students get really upset if you say you don't know something, so I bet biology students will be even more upset), but I wondered if there'd be interest in starting a more general/theoretical thread on this topic?

I'm thinking about the transmissibility of scientific knowledge at the moment, due to the "feminism & SM" thread, and was reminded of learning science at school: they'd make you do experiments so that you could "find out for yourself" that, say, water always boils at 100 degrees C. My water, of course, boiled at no such temperature but fluctuated around 101-102, at which point I was informed that "something must have gone wrong in the experiment" and that my results were invalidated by the "fact" that water always boils at 100. Which is a really, really sucky way of demonstrating the usefulness of experimentation (though I appreciate my school didn't really have time or resources to devote to ensuring that I personally could successfully replicate much-demonstrated results).

Ahem. Anyway, I'd be interested to know what sort of theory-practice balance you're planning to have and how you might negotiate the sorts of problems that might arise.

19:46 / 13.08.02

Sorry, just wanted to say that "fact" is in quotes there not because I am claiming that my experiment singlehandedly falsified the boiling point of pure water for all time, but because the point of teaching thru experiments was supposed to be that the "facts" were going to be established through the experiment, not that the experiment was going to be invalidated by the "facts".

20:05 / 13.08.02

My water, of course, boiled at no such temperature but fluctuated around 101-102, at which point I was informed that "something must have gone wrong in the experiment" and that my results were invalidated by the "fact" that water always boils at 100. Which is a really, really sucky way of demonstrating the usefulness of experimentation - Deva

Actually, this is a really incisive criticism of the scientific method in my view. One has to work really quite hard to answer it. And there they were, rocking the foundations of scientific knowledge at school.

09:14 / 14.08.02

Well, I was menstruating at the time, Lurid: that might have explained the anomalous results...

(Sorry for threadrot. I am geniunely interested in what people have to say about classroom experiments but should probably start a new thread.)