This week in science, there is a report of a pretty damning report on the value of educational software. The study reported on used four maths software at the primary and high school grade level and found that there was no significant improvement in grades over traditional curriculum. The full report paints [...]
Archive for March, 2009
Mar8
What is Measureable
In any experiment, assumptions are made and these assumptions can lead to systematic errors. To avoid these errors, and understand when results do not apply, one has to understand what is being measured and what assumption are made that might lead to systematic errors in the measurements, or limit the domain of the results of those measurements. One situation that such systematic errors are very clear are in IQ tests, which assume that all people approach the world with the same skills, and the skills tested are significantly preferable over other skills not tested.
Mar3
Darwin Remix
The 12 February issue of Nature, celebrating the life and gifts of Charles Darwin, is quite fascinating, mostly in that we continue to see a a great mash up of biology and social science. One of the articles goes to great lengths in this direction, ferreting out the common threads that seems to be universally [...]
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Mar2
Ambrosia
In a recent study, Chinese and American scientist studies the result of general and content scientific knowledge. While they Chinese had superior content knowledge, the scientists measure comparable process knowledge between the two groups. The researchers use this to assert that the methods of teaching are not so important with respect to process knowledge, and that inquiry based methods might have a slight edge in such an environment.
