Back to the Future: Crowdsourcing Innovation by Refocusing Science Education by Travis Ty Norsen

Hi Travis,

Nice work! The examples were very helpful, and I learned some things about history of science from them.

While I agree that science education and scientific approaches to work are important, I wonder if you could elaborate on why this is among the most important factors in shaping the future? If there were more room in the essay, this is what I'd most have liked to see.

Best of luck,

Daniel Dewey

Crucial Phenomena

Travis,

Excellent essay. I am in total agreement that Science Education is the key to humanity's future well-being.

In addition, I think we are like-minded on history. In fact, if you get a chance to read my essay (here) you will see many historical references - Ptolemy, Copernicus also make the same point in my essay: the need to cbe open to new or different thinking".

I totally enjoyed your essay. I look forward to your comments on mine.

-- Ajay

Hi Travis, I enjoyed reading your essay.

I was subjected to Nuffield physics as a child. Quote: "learning for understanding in a course of practical exploration, leading to class discussion, leading in turn to more experimenting and so on, with a constant interplay between class and teacher, maintained by a sense of purpose and curiosity'. The revisers of the course identified three main components of teaching for understanding: * Experiments - pupils' own experimenting to give them experience of scientific work;* Questions - essential learning aids to encourage thinking;* Models and theory - a progressive discussion to give intellectual satisfaction."National STEM centre, Nuffield physics

It sounds much better on paper than in the classroom.I couldn't really see the point of getting apparatus out or finding a bench of apparatus, spending a lesson assembling it- not knowing what we were supposed to be doing with it because we were meant to be constructing our own experiment, then packing it all away again. Followed by writing up a table of numbers, often from someone else's experiment or the teacher's if no one had got numbers from their apparatus. I would much rather have been told what it was all about.

I think your suggestion of learning about the historical discoveries sounds more exciting in an essay than having to endure it as a compulsory lesson. I think what is required is engaging teachers who can impart the passion of exploration and the excitement of discovery, which might encourage students to pursue science or retain a lifelong interest. Crowd-sourcing is a good idea but you may be overstating matters when you say "In a world where science education focused on historical controversies, the road to the future would become a freshly-paved multi-lane super-highway, headed West.

Unfortunately to head west also has another meaning, Quote "If something goes west, it is lost, damaged, or spoiled in some way:"Cambridge Dictionaries online.

Good luck, Georgina

That anonymous was me,

May. 25, 2014 @ 06:28 GMT

Hi Travis,

Your essay which could have been titled "Back to the Future" is excellent. In last years essay I made the case that we got stuck with the uncertainty principle because of an historical accident. Now everyone accepts the uncertainty principle without question. Unraveling this knot will require education that reviews the history of uncertainty. Eventually we may say "Did we really do that!"

High Marks,

Don Limuti

Travis,

In teaching physics I occasionally mention some of these historical elements. I also mention in even elementary courses some of the issues with modern developments. Elementary courses of course cover basic things, which within their domain of observation are battle hardened theories. No matter how advanced physics becomes F = ma will still work with standard problems such as the block on an inclined plane. It sometimes is a little hard to make those topics fresh.

I also in elementary physics give a bit of history about gunpowder and cannons with respect to Galileo's equations of motion. It is sometimes interesting to include aspects of what was happening in society at the time of certain scientific developments.

LC

Travis,

That was a truly great essay which was a great relief to read having long been browbeaten for taking that view of QM by those who insist they 'know' precisely how it works.

I also commend and have long argued similar views to yours on teaching. It was a pleasure and privelege to meet your views on the way past in the 5.9's and have the opportunity to help the essay on it's way up.

I could write at length on QM but instead I just hope you'll carefully read the classical reproduction of it's predictions in my essay, circumventing Bell's theorem by employing a different and 'real' starting assumption, though still satisfying Neils Bohr. For; 'collapse to single states etc' substitute; 'only one hemisphere of a rotating body can be interacted with at a time', and geometric derivation of the cosine distribution on the surface of a Bloch sphere as Malus law.

The subjective classroom experiment in the end notes modelling the process has been reproduced. (I have a 'kit' to do so if you'd like it). The model predicts the anomalous data found by both Aspect and Weihs (see also my last years essay). There was much more which had to be excluded but I hope you may anyway think mine of similar value to yours. I greatly look forward to your comments and advice in any event.

Best wishes.

Peter

Dear Travis,

I share your idea. Your essay is wonderful. I like these sentences: "The idea of incorporating historical material and perspectives into the science curriculum - so that students focus more on "interesting puzzles and how they were resolved" and less on "truths to be accepted""

And, "We should expect all of this, that is, if we can resist the impulse to dismiss the controversy as "metaphysical" or otherwise meaningless and unscientific. Unfortunately, though, the standard pedagogical orthodoxy on this particular controversy remains "shut up and calculate". [11] Students, that is, are deliberately shielded from the existence of a controversy, and advised against wasting time thinking about it (should they somehow learn of its existence)." Unfortunately Feynman's "shut up and calculate" philosophy has become an orthodox philosophy ironically mocking other new theories as "philosophy".

If you have time please read mine and I advance KQID theory that reveals and explains the what, how and why Existence.

I rated your wisdom essay a ten (10).

I wish you the best,

Leo KoGuan