The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational and cultural institutions. Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to discover, interpret, and disseminate information about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe through a wide-ranging program of scientific research, education, and exhibition.This is a course for educators and that's right up my alley. You may want to sign up as well. Here's the description and the video.
How are all of the species living on Earth today related? How does understanding evolutionary science contribute to our well-being? In this course, participants will learn about evolutionary relationships, population genetics, and natural and artificial selection. Participants will explore evolutionary science and learn how to integrate it into their classrooms.It's a bit disturbing that the Next Generation Science Standards don't mention random genetic drift, Neutral Theory, speciation, or population genetics [Natural Selection and Evolution] but the course promises to cover population genetics and I assume that it will also cover all mechanisms of evolution since it's being taught by an evolutionary biologist (Joel Cracraft).
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The AMNH course Evolution: A Course for Educators provides an overview of biological evolution for educators. Informed by the recently released Next Generation Science Standards, the course explores the history of evolutionary theory and the evidence that supports it. We will learn about patterns of human evolution and societal implications of modern evolutionary biology, and how scientists determine relatedness among living and extinct organisms. Course participants will bring their understanding of course themes - along with content resources, discussion questions, and assignments - into their own teaching.
The purpose of the course is to train the next generation of high school (and university) teachers. One of the instructors, David Randle, is an expect on education. We all know that teachers need to be updated on modern evolutionary theory.
It starts next Monday. I'll let you know how I'm doing when I write the first test.
Ooh, I foresee a double reverse Chick Tract in our future. :-)
ReplyDeleteI took a MOOC Course on "Introduction to Genetics And Evolution" taught by Dr. Mohamed Noor (a former student of Jerry Coyne's, actually). It was good and included quite a bit of detail on genetic drift, neutral theory and population genetics especially.
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ReplyDeletehey nice post meh, You are one of the best writers I've seen of recent. I love your style of blogging here. this post reminds me of an equally interesting post that I read some time ago on Daniel Uyi's blog: Friend Zoned Guy .
ReplyDeletekeep up the good work friend. I will be back to read more of your posts.
Regards