Monthly Archives: April 2013
Hanging Out with Andy Revkin
“How do we head through nine billion people by around 2050 without really screwing up too much?”
Andy Revkin writes the DotEarth blog for the New York Times, and has been writing about the environment for almost thirty years. His topics are diverse (and his Twitter stream rich with links) and connected to much of what our students have chosen to explore in our current Environmental Sciences unit in Grade 10 (MYP5).*
He very kindly agreed to G+ Hangout with some students before school, to discuss science writing in general and how he masters his craft on the environment beat. We learned a lot from Andy, and loved his assertion that he is not a ‘doom and gloom’ writer, but that the environment is different, and more complex than we first thought.
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Here are links to some of the ideas & issues he mentioned in the chat:
- His ‘Postcards’ series, snapshots of science and environmental research
- Psychology & the environment
- Schools and syllabuses designed with the environment in mind
- Twitter in the classroom
- Obama and the National Academy of Sciences
- Will we have fewer, more dangerous hurricanes?
- The Burning Season book: the murder of Chico Mendez
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Andy chatting with the early arrivals on G+ Hangouts.
*As part of our current Grade 10 Environmental Science unit, students have broken into groups depending on their interests and IBDP Sciences choices. They have designed their own unit content, though assessment types are common – a lab they design, a test we’ll write based on their chosen assessment statements and a piece of science writing. I’ll dedicate a whole post to how the unit worked once we’re done.
For the science writing task, students are asked to find real-life articles, case-studies or stimulus materials that will provide a context for some of their content. We showed them some models, of great science writing, but I realised my Twitter lists were light on environment writers.
A quick tweet (and some follow-up emails) fixed all that:
https://twitter.com/ferrisjabr/status/322324597791916032
Thanks again to Andy for chatting to us – it was a great opportunity to talk to a real pro.
It is also evidence, once again, that Twitter can be an amazing tool for classes and professional development.
Are you replacing sleep with food? DBQ practice.
https://twitter.com/scicurious/status/327240402367307776
I came across this through Ed Yong’s weekly linklist, but @SciCurious often writes really interesting posts (Neurotic Physiology) on neurobiology. This one is particularly relevant to #IBBio students for a few reasons. First, you guys are up way too late, way too often. Second, it connects directly to our course – read this blog post (based on this paper), especially students working on option A: Nutrition, or anyone reviewing hormonal control.
Click for the graphs & article at the Neurotic Physiology blog.
Finally it is ripe for data-based question practice.
These graphs click-through to the originals posted at SciCurious’s blog. Here are some DBQ-style questions you might ask:
- Calculate the difference in post-dinner snack energy intake between having a ‘normal’ 9h sleep and the sleep-deprived 5h condition.
- Compare the trend in energy expenditure throughout the day between 9h sleep and 5h sleep.
- Describe the difference between 9h sleep and 5h in terms of eating patterns.
- Evaluate the hypothesis that “when we sleep less, we eat more” based on the data provided and information in the article.
- Explain the role of the appetite control centre of the brain on appetite, and suggest how it is affected by the conditions of the experiment.
Appetite Control: from the Wellcome Trust (‘The Anatomy of Appetite’ explainer page here).
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So there you go – you learned something.
Get to bed. And leave the snacks in the fridge.
Thrift Shop Parody: TCA (Kreb’s) Cycle Rap
Pitched just a little over HL, but very well done and super catchy, here’s Wilson Lam’s Thrift Shop Parody:
Related, of course, is Tom McFadden’s Oxidate It Or Love It:
And if all that’s too musical, here’s Hank:
Electronics Bathed in Blood & Destruction
Although George Monbiot’s fruitless search for an ethical smartphone has ended with the discovery of tin for parts being sourced through child labour on the Bangka Islands in Indonesia, it has turned up a lot of useful resources that could form great prompts for an MYP Sciences, Design and Economics inter-disciplinary unit on life cycles of electronics.
Some ideas that could be pitched at different levels for students:
- What is life cycle analysis and what do we mean by ‘designed for the dump’?
- How can we create resources that help us appreciate what we have, rather than feeling the ‘need’ to pick up the latest and greatest?
- Design a campaign or project based on one of the 8 R’s (below).
- Analyse and evaluate the data in the Short Circuit report. Write a case study or investigative piece one one og highlight facts, issues, problems or potential solutions.
- Collect and analyse community data on perceptions of need, rate of purchase and disposal of electronics. Do people know what is in them, where their dangers are and where they end up?
One of the resources shared by Monbiot was this fantastically detailed document called the Short Circuit Report, produced by the Gaia Foundation & Friends of the Earth’s Make It Better campaign. It is packed with information, data and images. One in particular stood out as a discussion starter on choices and design:
How would the 8 ‘R’s change your approach to consumption and design? Please read the full Short Circuit report for this diagram in context. Click the image to view.
The Story of Electronics is another video introduction that might hook students into finding out more about these shiny gadgets that are permanently attached to our bodies.
For more resources and ideas, have a look at this Storify:
Definedly… maybe? Get the definitions right in your review.
Nail down those definitions
Define is a ‘simple’ objective 1 command term… but you must be precise in your answers.
Definitions are also a great start to review and build into deeper explanation of the concepts.
- Quiz yourself on the definitions, check your answers. This Sortable Syllabus might help.
- Pay attention to the markschemes – what is the importance of the underlined terms and why can’t you get marks without them?
- ‘Unpack’ the definition into its component parts – what is the relevance of each and how does it lead to more in-depth explanation of the concept?
Here’s a quiz for the define assessment statements in the SL Core and for the two options my class did this year. It’s a GoogleDoc – here’s the link.
Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre: quick review & course connections
The Book
There’s a good chance that you’d not be here to read this without the pharmaceutical industry designing and manufacturing the vaccines and medications you’ve used during your life – but how much do we know about where they come from?
In this thoughtful, well-researched and instructive book, Ben Goldacre* (doctor, evidence-based medicine proponent and author of Bad Science) outlines how Big Pharma works, but also what the issues are and how they can be fixed. He has a TEDMED Talk on the premise of the book (below) and takes care no to write a ‘hatchet-job’ on the industry, but to shine a light on the current state of clinical research and marketing.
I recommend the book to IB Biology and IB Chemistry students and teachers – read a copy before the next teaching cycle begins – as there are many sections of direct relevance to our courses that could be used as lesson ideas or real-world contexts for what we’re learning. It would make a great addition to the reading list for students, especially those intending to pursue medical, biochemistry or pharmaceutical careers.
In each chapter, Goldacre identifies a problem and gives a clear account of why it is a problem, using systematic reviews of academic literature and specific case studies to highlight each point. He makes it clear to the reader why these problems actually are problems, but also offers concrete advice or proposals on how to solve them.
Some highlights for the IB Biology course
Click & Go
Chapter 1 gets stuck in with statistical analysis and why systematic reviews of literature, meta-analyses and careful work with data are so important. It introduces the work of the Cochrane Collaboration and works through a neat illustration of the importance of considering all the data as more studies are carried out. The Cochrane Collaboration’s logo is itself a fascinating story, and you could model this in class with a simple set of investigations in the early stages of the course (see some ideas on the Statistical Analysis page).This video is very useful – from the Testing Treatments page.
The ideas and issues come thick and fast for the rest of the book.
As you read it, you will see many potential connections to the course, as well as to Theory of Knowledge. Here are just a few ideas that might spark discussion in class:
- What is the problem with missing trial data and publishing only favourable results?
- What does this publication bias do the reliability of the information we use to make decisions?
- How are drugs designed and tested (this is super interesting, going from in-vitro and animal testing to stage 1, 2 and 3 human trials, and has an obvious link to the IB Animal Experimentation Policy).
- What are the ethical issues with human testing, in particular the ideal/ representative nature of the patients used and the incentives they receive?
- What is the impact of outsourcing trials to other countries that might have different ethical codes?
- What are the ethical issues of randomising and controlling trials with humans, particularly in cases where there is a known drug that helps compared to a new drug?
- What are the roles of drugs regulators on medicine and are they working?
- How should trials be designed to give more valid and reliable data (for example, comparing the ‘new’ drug against the current best alternative vs placebo)?
- How could we use nationwide health records to conduct larger, simpler trials to determine which treatments really are most effective?
- How do the many branches of pharmaceutical marketing affect decision-making and how can we recognise and mitigate for this?
- How can we fix it all to keep medical innovation going whilst generating reliable, cost-effective data and drugs?
TED Talk: What doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe
*Yeah, I know I’m a bit of a fanboy and have featured him on here a lot, but with this and Bad Science, he has produced a lot of useful content to connect to our classes.
i-Biology 