Reach for the Stars @antares@qoto.org

@freemo First apologies, I imagine your skill with a pipette is unmatched.

My suggestion is that science labs should be a place to practice problem solving, deductive reasoning, and the scientific method. The labs I see especially in high school and lower division college classes are about who can follow step-by-step instructions to get closest to a predetermined correct result. The person who comes closest to measuring exactly 10.0ml of HCl wins.

I wan to make a request to #Science #Teachers: When you design labs please design some (most) without step-by-step instructions. The chances of your students needing pipette skills in 10 years is remote. What will serve most student better will be the ability to identify a problem, design and experiment that might explain that problem, setup and run that experiment, then interpret the results. Perhaps followed up by design a second experiment if the first didn't help.

Save the "follow the recipe" skills for home ec. The most important thing you can teach your student at any level is experimental design.

#rant #edutooter #education #scienceEducation #Teaching #teacher @academicchatter

@rbreich teachers should not be having to purchase school supplies out of pocket. Not even $300 worth.

@CelloMomOnCars

I agree that I would find an urban area with fewer cars to have a higher quality of life than the equivalent area with more.

However after two decades away, this country bumkin is thrilled to finally escape the crushing, crowded, noisy, built up environment of the city to get back to having an acre(half a hectare) out on dirt road where I have the space to grow my own food, not have to fight my neighbors about the value of established trees that might hit their building, and can see the stars at night. At least for me this is a higher quality of life than any city no matter how well designed.

@AmyPetty

Help a person out. I have a bachelors degree in #Physics that a am very proud of and a Masters of Divinity that is from a different time in my life. Professionally, I would now really benefit from having a solid formal education in #ElectricalEngineering. What are some options for getting a formal degree (either BS or MA level) while continuing to work full time?

I would appreciate boosts for wider reach if your followers are knowledgeable in this area

@petergleick I hate threaded posts. One of the selling points of Qoto.org was the 2¹⁶ character limit. This is why we like the fediverse: different servers, different standards.

@freemo

@ech @georgetakei

California has a so-called "Top Two" primary so you really can vote for whoever you like in March then one only two in November - in statewide offices that is frequently a moderate democrat vs a progressive. Not as good as Single Transferable Vote, but way better than First Past the Post.

@CelloMomOnCars You go work on making your cities even denser and more transit friendly. I'm going to try get my neighbors out here in the country to trade their full-sized trucks for something more environmentally friendly. When #LAmetro or #Bart makes it to SLO county we can talk again.

@CelloMomOnCars Why not both? One of the biggest impediments to addressing the #ClimateCrisis is resistance from consumers unwilling to lower their quality of life. we can fight through it or accommodate it. #EV s are a suitable accommodation while we also fight for better transit options. We should not drop support EVs just because they are not the total solution.

@w7voa This is actually quite a brilliant move by the #UAW. Striking workers get strike funding from the union and cannot get unemployment. Workers who are laid off get to collect unemployment from the state instead. The union, by striking at only one of two closely aligned plants, gets twice as much harm to the companies while the tax payer picks up half the cost for them

@wdlindsy https://nrich.maths.org/4717

@mike I used to think I wanted network controlled lighting, then I moved into a house that was built to be lived in not to be sold and found that when the builders thought about where it would be useful to have switches not where would it be the cheapest to put them, I stopped wanting smart switches. (Also no less then 8 two-way switches and 2 three-ways)