NSTA WebNews Digest

Top Stories

Teaching in the Outdoor Classroom

3/19/2010 - NSTA Reports—Debra Shapiro
NSTA member Kim Hooks takes her Swainsboro Primary School students to one of the school's five outdoor classrooms; she says “it opens up a whole different learning experience for them.”

A Bridge to Biology, and Beyond

3/18/2010 - NSTA Reports—Lynn Petrinjak
The idea is simple enough: Get kids interested in biotechnology by letting them experience it. The problem is how to do that. In high schools around San Diego, one answer started as BioBridge, now called ScienceBridge.

Learning Science in Community Gardens

3/17/2010 - NSTA Reports—Debra Shapiro
Looking for a way to make your science lessons more meaningful by connecting them to your community? The Garden Mosaics program can help.

Making Life Better in the Trenches

3/16/2010 - NSTA Reports—Judy McKee
Recently the NSTA Retired e-mail list members shared stories from their years as science teachers; several people mentioned how important relationships with colleagues had been in their daily life at school.

Forensic Role for Hand Bacteria

3/16/2010 - BBC News
The bacteria on our hands could be used in forensic identification, in the same way as DNA, say scientists.

Teen Engineers Design Green Cities of the Future

3/16/2010 - Voice of America News
National competition focuses on preparing for emergencies

Spacecraft Takes Express Tour of Martian Moon

3/16/2010 - ScienceNews
The sharpest images yet taken by the Mars Express spacecraft of Mars’ tiny moon Phobos reveal features as small as 4.4 meters across, the European Space Agency announced March 15.

Amid Fraud Allegations, Researchers Say Vaccine Science Solid

3/16/2010 - ScienceInsider
The anti-vaccine movement has been buzzing over a fraud investigation involving Poul Thorsen, a Danish scientist who co-authored key papers in 2002 and 2003 that found no link between childhood vaccines and autism.

Homework Is Going High-Tech at Some North Texas Schools

3/16/2010 - The Dallas Morning News
vanguard of schools around the country are sending students home with the same advanced technology that they work with in the classroom.

NSTA Legislative Update: March 15, 2010

3/15/2010 - Office of Legislative and Public Affairs
President Obama Releases Plan to Revise Elementary and Secondary Education Act

GSCC Instructor Receives National Technology Award

3/15/2010 - The Gadsden Times
Brian Geislinger, a Gadsden State Community College physics instructor, has been named the recipient of the 2010 Vernier Technology Award. The award, which also is sponsored by the National Science Teachers Association, is presented to seven individuals nationwide who promote cutting-edge techniques for data-collection technology using various handheld electronics in the classroom.

Health Wise: Cold or Flu—Know the Difference

3/15/2010 - NSTA Reports—Stephanie Liberatore
How can you tell the difference between a cold and the flu?

School Credit—Charlotte Teacher Wins Several Grants and Honors

3/15/2010 - Winston-Salem Journal
While Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools inches toward teacher performance pay, biology teacher Tamica Stubbs is reaping some serious rewards for excellence in her Waddell High classroom. The Burroughs Wellcome Fund just chose Stubbs for a new $175,000 five-year grant. The National Science Teachers Association is giving her a $10,000 Shell Science Teaching Award.

Effect of Chicago's Tougher Science Policy Mixed

3/15/2010 - Education Week
A policy change that made college-preparatory courses the default high school curriculum in the Chicago public schools increased the number of science courses that students took and passed. But it also kept some students from taking higher-level science courses and did not increase the college-going rate, according to a study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Newer Genetic Test for Autism More Effective

3/15/2010 - HealthDay.com
A newer type of genetic test is better at detecting abnormalities that predispose a child to autism than standard genetic tests, new research has determined.

Business and Industry Groups to Launch STEM Coalition

3/12/2010 - Education Week
A new business and industry coalition set to be announced today aims to "enhance and elevate" the U.S. commitment to STEM education, with participants representing diverse sectors, from the aerospace, manufacturing, and even entertainment industries to biotechnology, software engineers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Trusting Science on Climate Change

3/12/2010 - CNN Money.com
"We support teaching evidence-based science, and right now it's overwhelmingly in support that climate change is occurring," said Francis Eberle, an earth science teacher for 15 years and now executive director of the National Science Teachers Association.

Successful Science Fiction in Moon

3/12/2010 - Jacob Clark Blickenstaff, PhD
Now that the 2009 Academy Awards have been presented, NSTA's movie reviewer calls your attention to "the best science fiction film of 2009 you probably never heard of."

Pittsburgh Science Teacher Rises to the Nation's Top

3/12/2010 - POP city
Nadine Suhan was one of 10 science teachers in the country selected as a Bayer-NSTA Fellow, a yearlong professional development program for secondary science teachers. She will attend NSTA's 2010 National Conference in Philadelphia from March 18–21.

Blood Pressure Fluctuations 'Warning Sign for Stroke'

3/12/2010 - BBC News
People with occasionally high blood pressure are more at risk of stroke than those with consistently high readings, research suggests.

Reforming Teacher Ed

3/12/2010 - Inside Higher Ed
A group representing colleges of teacher education on Thursday called for its member institutions to work with the rest of their universities, as well as schools, states and the federal government to emphasize and improve in-school preparation for teachers-to-be.

New Study Debunks Myths About Vulnerability of Amazon Rain Forests to Drought

3/12/2010 - ScienceDaily
A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Colleges Embrace MP4 Technology for Delivering Instruction

3/12/2010 - eSchool News
Four universities are giving students the chance to complete certificate and degree programs by downloading class material to mobile devices like iPhones and iPods in a distance-learning initiative that one day could be commonplace in higher education.

Half a Million for Gene Sequencers

3/12/2010 - ScienceInsider
The 10th annual Albany Medical Center Prize—the U.S.'s biggest prize in biomedicine—will go to three scientists who conceptualized the Human Genome Project: Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health; Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and David Botstein, director of Princeton University's Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.

Galaxy Study Validates General Relativity on Cosmic Scale, Existence of Dark Matter

3/11/2010 - ScienceDaily
An analysis of more than 70,000 galaxies by physicists demonstrates that the universe—at least up to a distance of 3.5 billion light years from Earth—plays by the rules set out 95 years ago by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity.

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