These are my thoughts about college counseling, science, and the environment.
-
This video recently came through in my daily feed from TED. I love trees. If I have a logo, it’s a tree. Specifically, my logo would be a baobab (Adansonia digitata), which is probably the coolest tree I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world. I camp under an amazing one in Mikumi National Park, about 5 hours from…
-
It’s been a few days since I’ve posted here, due in large part to a hectic work week as I still settle into the new school year. In words from my 12-year-old son describing the start of his year, “When you get hit by a train, it’s not the caboose that kills you.” I’m sure…
-
Good morning! Well, it’s Monday, so how about just a “morning” until my coffee kicks in? Speaking of coffee, ASAP Science released the video below over the weekend. It’s not particularly relevant to anything we’re studying right now, but it is educational and scientific. And now for the less good news: Global warming is likely…
-
Welcome parents! I want to take this opportunity to introduce you to my MYP and DP science classes for the 2014-2015 school year. If you’re reading this, then you might have been in my classroom this afternoon. I’m posting the video below because I think it nicely summarizes what’s happening in the world of education…
-
Happy Monday morning! This morning I’ll share with you one of my favorite resources on the web: the GRID-Arendal Maps and Infographics Library from the United Nations. It sounds complicated, but it’s really pretty simple. And it’s simply pretty, too! The Infographics Library is essentially a repository of data the UN has collected from its…
-
More video resources today. I’ll keep this up until I have exhausted my subscription list on YouTube. For more science-related content, be sure to check my Twitter feed, which I’ve also embedded on the mrkremerscience.com homepage. Brady Haran is a supremely entertaining master of chemistry at the University of Nottingham, and he posts new videos every…
-
Another colleague of mine in the battle against ignorance, Steve Loschi, shared the following video and blog post with me while we were planning our current grade 10 science unit. (That’s a real-world demonstration of collaboration, kids!) The video is linked through a physics blog called Galileo’s Pendulum, written by Matthew Francis. It’s a great…
-
This TED Talk is appropriate for the start of a new school year. Naomi Oreskes breaks down the traditional concept of the scientific method and explains some of the realities of how scientific thinking has shaped our world in the past and present. It’s worth a watch, especially if you know climate-change deniers, creationists, or…
-
I’m relatively new to Twitter. I joined about a year and a half ago when I finally upgraded from my old-school Nokia to an iPhone 4. It seemed like an easy way to keep track of all the random topics I follow on various parts of the web, but I quit using Twitter pretty quickly…
-
It’s Monday morning, which generally means I’m still waiting for that second cup of coffee to kick in, but today I have reason to be a little more awake than usual. My colleague and partner in the battle against ignorance, Matt Erdosy, passed along the following website at the end of last school year, and…
-
I subscribe to a number of cool science channels on YouTube. If you’re a fan of science, you’ve probably already discovered these on your own, but if you’re just beginning your scientific journey of discovery, then you should check out some of the following channels. They are all entertaining, educational, scientifically accurate, and generally fun.…
-
It’s time to get started on what should be an exciting, innovative, engaging year for myself and all the students in my classes. We’ve got a brand new MYP model to unpack, new course content, and – the thing I’m personally most excited about this school year – figuring out how to take full advantage…
-
Mrs Courtney Park, IST Librarian and Media Specialist extraordinaire, shared this document with me yesterday, and I’ve already put it on the bulletin boards in my classrooms. If you are a student (or anyone doing online research for that matter), this is a great resource. Check it out, download it, study it, and use it.…
-
That’s a paraphrasing of Barry Commoner’s timeless quote about ecology, and it could serve as the theme for our entire ESS course. It also nicely summarizes the systems approach to science, in which we focus on how things work together rather than just the individual parts. Delving into the various news stories that get classified…
-
As we start the new school year, it’s time to revisit and review some of the major ideas from previous lessons. Today’s post recaps the systems approach to science – the examination of how parts of a whole work together to create interdependent linkages and something called ’emergent properties’, in which the whole is greater than the…
-
I came across this article on my Twitter feed this morning. It relates to several topics within our ESS syllabus, such as Topic 4 – Conservation and Biodiversity, Topic 6 – Global Warming, and Topic 3 – Resources as Natural Capital. It outlines the potential links between trading carbon credits on an international exchange, economic…
-
My colleague Matt Erdosy passed the following article along this morning. It outlines the myths and new science surrounding the reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone ecosystem in Montana and Wyoming, USA. Is the Wolf a Real American Hero? – New York Times 9 March 2014 It turns out that the predator-prey relationship between wolves…
-
There’s a serious problem with elephant poaching in Tanzania, and it seems to be getting worse by the day. The series of articles below outline some of what’s happening in this beautiful country and just how devastating the Asian demand for ivory is to Tanzania’s natural resources. We can consider elephants as natural capital, a…
-
A former Peace Corps colleague just posted this Huffington Post article outlining the precarious state of Panthera leo senegalensis, the West African Lion, which is genetically distinct from the big cats we have here in Tanzania. According to researchers, there are only about 400 lions left in all of West Africa. That puts their population…
-
Thanks to Mr Cody Taggart for sending this cool Earth wind map of current wind patterns all over Earth. Rotate the globe to any location to see what’s blowing there.
You must be logged in to post a comment.