Medications prescribed by your doctor are designed to support your health. But if incorrectly prescribed, misused, or abused, these prescriptions can become dangerous and sometimes fatal. A pharmacist’s job is to ensure that your medications and dosages are correct. By considering all medications you take and the food you eat, pharmacists also work to prevent adverse chemical interactions from occurring. As an essential part of the medical team, pharmacist Ken Thai provides a critical link between physicians and patients.
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Although it may be an old-school habit of mind with roots in the Renaissance, interdisciplinary thinking has never been more important than in the modern world. In their daily lives, our students will need to understand complex problems and evaluate information from multiple sources. Most of our important discoveries and pressing problems—from deciphering the genetic code to improving our health care system—require that scientists work together across disciplines. Encouraging students to think outside of rigid disciplinary boundaries can help us create better informed decision makers and more interesting lives.
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With the increasing popularity of energy drinks, I wonder—are these drinks safe? How do they affect teens?
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An instructional unit incorporating some of the Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) hydrology protocols provides an excellent way to connect academic learning, scientific inquiry, multiple subjects, and the values required for concerned citizenship in a democracy. This article describes the GLOBE hydrology protocols as a model for inquiry that integrates sciences and other disciplines, as well as the benefits and challenges posed by incorporating this type of project in the classroom. Through the use of data collected by young people around the world, students are engaged in meaningful data collection and analysis.
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As part of the “Car Lab Project,” students constructed rubber band cars, raced them, and worked through a number of automotive activities. The students engaged in this project certainly had fun, but they also used high-tech gear such as motion sensors and graphing calculators to gather data on the distance and time cars traveled and to generate time versus distance graphs for their cars. This project meets national standards for high school mathematics, science, and technology content (NCTM 2000; ITEA 2000; NRC 1996) while engaging students in cognitive activities and motor skills.
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To avoid the potential for litigation, teachers need to be informed. They must know how to prevent accidents and should be proactive to protect both themselves and students from harm in the classroom. The following actions are recommended to help teachers maintain a safe working environment by protecting students from unreasonable risks of harm. Also, these actions will help teachers remain safe from litigation. If litigation does arise, these actions provide a paper trail that documents a teacher’s efforts to prevent harm to students.
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From media news coverage to fluctuating gas prices, the topic of energy is hard to ignore. However, little connection often exists between energy use in our daily lives and the presentation of energy-related concepts in the science classroom. The concepts of energy production and consumption bring together knowledge from several science disciplines to both enhance student understanding and seek solutions to important global problems. This article provides an overview of activities and discussions teachers can use to address the questions raised about biofuels in biology, chemistry, and physics classes.
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The study of the human form is fundamental to both science and art curricula. For vertebrates, perhaps no feature is more important than the skeleton to determine observable form and function. As Leonard da Vinci’s famous Proportions of the Human Figure (Virtruvian Man) illustrates, the size, shape, and proportions of the human body are defined by bones and their articulations. In this unit that focuses on the human skeleton, students are introduced to these concepts by asking them both to study da Vinci’s drawing and build their own model of the human skeleton. Units on animal camouflage and architecture are also presented to further support the art and science connection.
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Brain-based is an increasingly popular buzzword in educational circles. Brain research promises to take teaching from (supposedly) mere craft knowledge to a scientifically based realm from which researchers can make broadly applicable, objective conclusions. Before that day comes, however, we must first understand what brain-based research is, the kinds of data and conclusions researchers generate, and how applicable the conclusions are to classrooms.
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In both universities and K–12 schools, students leave one world and enter another as they attend classes in discipline-specific domains. But how can students gain the experiences necessary to make discoveries—for personal satisfaction, for academic enlightenment, and perhaps even for the betterment of humankind—without educators who see the advantages of and can provide worthwhile experiences in interdisciplinary practice? In our age of hyper-reductionism, accompanied by an almost fortress-like mentality regarding the sanctity and value of disciplines, perhaps it is time to examine what it would be like to think and learn outside the boxes.
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An interdisciplinary approach to teaching involves leveraging the different perspectives of each discipline to better understand an issue or problem. The most ideal topics for interdisciplinary study are those whose very nature is also interdisciplinary. Nanoscience—which combines biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and mathematics—is one such topic. This article presents the use of nanoscience as a theme for the interdisciplinary study of science and mathematics. An example curriculum and thoughts about an inquiry instructional method are included.
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