Fewmets

I tried to find education-based blogs that involved science education, but with limited success. Perhaps that speaks ill of my research skills or suggests I am not very open-minded about these things. Here though, was what I chose and why.

Education Games Research sounded promising, as I have been funded several times to develop educational games and I love a wide range of games. I value the social interaction that comes through shared play. The blog, however, has yet to prove engaging or to yield up anything that will impact my teaching.

The eduFire blog was highly ranked somewhere in the lists were given. I signed up based on that, only later discovering that the most recent post was November of last year.

Being a parent and a science teacher, the Parenting Science Blog looked very promising, but perhaps I should have looked further. It is mostly about research supporting how to raise your child. I suppose it is nice to have a funded study that supports what I find intuitively clear.

I have been skeptical in general about Twitter so I signed up for an award winning tweeter: Darcy1968. I have yet to find anything of interest but have my skepticism validated on several fronts. This experience has left me grateful for the 140 character limit.

I added Geology News from Geology.com to my reader. That has been the most useful to date, especially in light of the Chilean earthquake. One neat thing that led me to is that IRIS (the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) posts “teachable moments” materials for recent earthquakes. Another was a link to a pre-Haitian earthquake graphic in the New York Times that highlights earthquake risks associated with poor construction practices in major world cities.

Looking back through my starred items, I see that practically everyone is from Badastronomy.com. The one that probably has broadest appeal was The Scale of the Universe…well worth checking out.

I walk away from the Week 3 Things with a strong sense that following even this modest number of blogs is incredibly time consuming. If it weren’t for three snow days I never would have been able to do it.

I also find myself reflecting on the social phenomena around blogging Described in general terms we have one individual broadcasting what he or she likes and values and others generating a stream of predominantly affirming and supporting comments. The one probably judging self-worth (in part) based on comments. Dissenting opinions can be attacked by the supporters (I saw one supporter reply “How dare you!” to someone who asserted the post had been tedious). The supporters describe themselves as “followers”.

It seems like a fertile area for behavioral research: I can imagine a Master’s thesis exploring parallels among this and cults or middle school cliques. I do not mean to assert that his characterizes my entire experience, but it is telling that you do not have to look hard or far to find examples.