It is Friday & I still have the lingering effects of the flu 🙁 I hate being sick; the brain doesn’t work properly, for one thing. So thinking of something sensible to write is actually rather difficulty 🙁 But wait, is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Chemistry Cat, from a distant place […]
Continue readingMonth: July 2011
the taipei IBO – what we did when not in the jury room
It wasn’t all work & no play at the International Biology Olympiad in Taipei (27-hour stints in the jury room notwithstanding!). Our hosts took great care to show us some of the sights & tastes of Taipei, taking jury members on several excursions while the students were sitting their exams.
Continue readingwhat it was like at the IBO, part 1
Due to popular demand (Grant asked!) & also because I’m still a bit muzzy with the flu I picked up on my travels & don’t want to attempt anything ‘heavy’, I thought I’d do a few posts about my experiences at the International Biology Olympiad. Overseas, this competition is a Really Big Thing – there’s […]
Continue readingtechnology for technology’s sake, or is there something more?
Over the last couple of days I’ve been following a story about Orewa College’s decision to require next year’s year 9 students to have an iPad or similar tablet-style computer for school. (The schools stated preference is for the iPad 2.) And my first thought was, why? OK, I have an iPad, bought as a […]
Continue readinginternational biology olympiad: nz team brings home the medals :-)
As many of you will know, I’ve been to the 22nd International Biology Olympiad in Taipei, as an observer with the New Zealand team. This was New Zealand’s most successful Olympiad to date, as described by the Chair of the NZ IBO committee, Dr Angela Sharples: The New Zealand team of Benjamin Bai, Richard Chou, […]
Continue readinga re-run of ‘fact and theory’
Sometimes I think that the word ‘theory’ has to be one of the most misunderstood, and misused, words in science. A couple of science concepts that people often seem to have difficulty with are fact and theory: what the terms mean, and how we distinguish between them. One of my scientific heroes, the late Stephen […]
Continue readingplants – more than you expect (again)
I often think it’s a real pity that so many students seem to actively dislike learning about plants. Why is this? Is it because plants don’t seem to ‘do’ anything interesting? I used some of the information described here in a test question this year – the results were a salutory reminder to spend more […]
Continue readingwhy anecdotal ‘evidence’ is problematic
Often on Sciblogs someone ends up pointing out that another commenter’s ‘evidence’ is anecdotal, and thus doesn’t offer particularly strong support for a particular point of view. I’m kicking myself for not providing the link to this video, the last time it happened 🙂 At least a couple of times I’ve made a comment along […]
Continue readingmeditating on enrolment (again)
When I originally wrote this piece I’d been immersed in enrolments for the new (2009) year. The last week wasn’t quite so bad as we were just dealing with the B semester, but nonetheless, the registrar & I have seen a lot of students needing program advice. So I thought I’d run through some suggestions here, that might […]
Continue readingchoose wisely… (redux)
This post is really for students in year 12 (or 11) who are still finalising their subject choices. While I’m talking about Biology here, the same applies to other disciplines. Deciding at the last minute (ie when applying for uni) that you want to be an engineer is not ideal if you’ve never studied maths […]
Continue reading