LINKS FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS



National Center for Science Education (NCSE)
http://ncse.com/ :The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) defends the teaching of evolution in public schools. We are a nationally-recognized clearinghouse for information and advice to keep evolution in the science classroom and "scientific creationism" out.


Parenting Beyond Belief - On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion
http://www.parentingbeyondbelief.com/ : Parenting Beyond Belief is a book for loving and thoughtful parents who wish to raise their children without religion. There are scores of books available for religious parents. Now there's one for the rest of us.
Includes essays by Richard Dawkins, Julia Sweeney, Penn Jillette, Mark Twain, Dr. Jean Mercer, Dr. Donald B. Ardell, Rev. Dr. Kendyl Gibbons, and over twenty-five other doctors, educators, psychologists, and secular parents.



In this section of the British Humanist Association website you can find pages for teachers, students and parents to support education about Humanism, whether in school RE, philosophy and ethics, or in informal educational settings.
http://www.humanism.org.uk/education...


How many state maintained schools in England are faith schools?
There are 20,282 maintained schools in England of which 6802 are faith schools (source Edubase 2009). Around 68 per cent of maintained faith schools are Church of England schools and 30 per cent are Catholic. All but 57 of the maintained faith schools are associated with the major Christian denominations. The 57 schools are comprised of:

38 Jewish
11 Muslim
3 Sikh
1 Greek Orthodox
1 Hindu
1 Quaker
1 Seventh Day Adventist
1 United Reform Church.
http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/faithschools/


Resources on Evoution from the National Science Teachers association
I quote from their overview....The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), founded in 1944 and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, is the largest organization in the world committed to promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all. NSTA's current membership of 60,000 includes science teachers, science supervisors, administrators, scientists, business and industry representatives, and others involved in and committed to science education.
http://www.nsta.org/publications/evolution.aspx

Information on Evolution for both students and Teachers
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/

The complete work of Charles Darwin online
http://darwin-online.org.uk/


Labrats-How to get your kids or students the best science education possible, period.
http://www.sas.org/labrats/index.html

Beauty In The Universe- A non-profit educational organisation delivering top quality educational sessions about astronomy to children, adults and families.
http://www.beautyintheuniverse.co.uk/

Most of you have probably seen this, but it continues to blow my mind -
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/ ... lls/scale/

The Beekman was susggested by RD himself, right? This makes me nostalgic!

renekawa wrote:Most of you have probably seen this, but it continues to blow my mind -
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/ ... lls/scale/

My kid was amazed by it, and few of my pupils, too

I have noticed that many atheists automatically associate homeschooling with right-wing evangelical Christians, so I wanted to note that there are a lot of freethinkers/atheists/secular types who homeschool our kids. Here in Southern California I have been part of a homeschool group that has a large proportion of "nones" along with people of various religions. I have also discovered a website for freethinking homeschoolers, run by someone from Canada: http://www.hsfreethinkers.com/ ...This site is also linked to a facebook page. (The forums on this website are pretty quiet, but there are a lot of resources for parents on the site itself.)

There is a website called Parenting Science (http://www.parentingscience.com/) that investigates issues in parenting and education by looking at the research on the topic. I stumbled upon this while doing research for my own small blog, which focuses on research on learning, and how parents and teachers can apply it (http://latestlearningcurve.blogspot.com/).

While my own blog focuses on education issues (for parents as well as teachers), the Parenting Science site has some information on education but a ton of stuff on other sorts of parenting issues--everything from authoritative parenting to babies and sleep, from picky eaters to bullying. It's an interesting resource!

cathyincali, I saw your blog.
I think you might be interested in my expirience.
I am a primary school teacher in a small village in serbia.
People in village are mostly poorely educated, and even the educated ones do not speak foreign languages.

Inhabitans of my village are bilingual, though. They are minority of valachians in Serbia, so they speak valachian and serbian from childhood.

In every generation of pupils - and I have about 11-17 of them per generation - I have about 4-6 children fluently speaking german.
When I first asked their parents how did they learn german - the answer was usually "I have no idea. He/she just watched TV".
The fact is, kids watched some german satelite tv. They did learn the language, fluently.


I, myself, also have learned english by watching movies and tv shows in english.

Sanja --

Thanks for your interesting note. The blog post you read (http://latestlearningcurve.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-baby-einstein-cant-teach-your-baby.html) refers to studies that seem to demonstrate that babies don't learn a second language from TV. I found several sources that described the research in those terms.

Yet your example (and others) clearly show that TV watching can help people learn languages! I think it's possible that older children and adults can learn from TV, whereas babies don't...?

I believe the research I discussed was carried out to answer the question about whether parents should park their babies in front of a television set with special language-lesson DVDs (which cost $$) specifically so that they will learn to speak another language. And the answer is....NO.

I will try to find the time to address the fact that older kids, at least, DO in fact learn languages from TV in a further post. Thanks again for the note. Would you mind if I copied your post from this forum as a comment on my blog so that others can read it?

cathyincali wrote:Sanja --

Thanks for your interesting note. The blog post you read (http://latestlearningcurve.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-baby-einstein-cant-teach-your-baby.html) refers to studies that seem to demonstrate that babies don't learn a second language from TV. I found several sources that described the research in those terms.

Yet your example (and others) clearly show that TV watching can help people learn languages! I think it's possible that older children and adults can learn from TV, whereas babies don't...?

yes, of course.
I missed that you were talking about babies.
There is much about developmant of language and thinking in "Thinking and Speaking" by Lev Vigotsky.
He did many researches in area of developmental psychology. Long time ago, but his conclusions are still valid.

cathyincali wrote:
Would you mind if I copied your post from this forum as a comment on my blog so that others can read it?

No, not at all.

renekawa wrote:Most of you have probably seen this, but it continues to blow my mind -
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/ ... lls/scale/

I'll add this to the childrens links, thanks its great!!

A homeschooling friend of mine mentioned Secular Homeschooling Magazine. I really don't know much about it, but I thought the link might be of some use: http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/

Rockshell wrote:A homeschooling friend of mine mentioned Secular Homeschooling Magazine. I really don't know much about it, but I thought the link might be of some use: http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/

Great. I wish I'd known about them earlier.

Their web site has an interesting feature - you can read one or two articles out of an issue free, online, and then purchase the rest of the issue (and back issues). Seems like an intelligent way to stimulate interest in their magazine.

Thanks for the link!

For any parents or teachers looking for good interactive animations for introducing biological concepts, here are a few I would recommend. I can dig up lots more if anyone is interested:

Peppered moth natural selection simulation. Check out the “Bird’s eye view” game.
http://www.techapps.net/interactives/pepperMoths.swf

DNA Double Helix – twist, rotate, highlight, play with it
http://biomodel.uah.es/en/model4/dna/dnapairs.htm

Diffusion
http://lsvr12.kanti-frauenfeld.ch/KOJ/J ... usion.html

Enzymes - Guides you through the basics.
http://www.lpscience.fatcow.com/jwanama ... ivity.html

The inner life of a cell - just an all-around cool video.
http://www.maniacworld.com/inner-life-of-a-cell.html

DNA Replication - simple visuals, but show the process and enzymatic functions well.
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/giannini/f ... a-rna2.swf

Great computer animations of transcription and translation can be found here (you'll have to click around to get them, then zoom in on the videos to enlarge):
http://www.dnai.org/a/index.html

...and for some nice physics simulations;

http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/new

They have bio and chem too, but I haven't checked them out.