Teaching observation: aim higher.(Editorial)

From: Science and Children | Date: February 1, 2008| Author: | Copyright information

Observation is a fundamental process in science. It is a skill that many science curricula emphasize. It seems like such a simple skill. As the humorous and often insightful baseball great Yogi Berra noted, "You can observe a lot just by watching."

But observation skills are not quite so simply mastered. Like anything else, just watching and observing does little to improve the skill. In order to improve, we must pay explicit attention to observation. But we rarely pay that explicit attention to how and why we observe in science. In this issue, we explore what it means to ...

Read all of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research

Related newspaper, magazine, and trade journal articles from HighBeam Research

(Including press releases, facts, information, and biographies)

	Part 3, responding to observations Magazine article from: Biopharm International ; Responding to observations made by inspectors is often the most...Developing a Response Once the final observations have been issued, the clock begins...to review and clearly understand the observations made by FDA. The terminology can be...
	Survival Guide to FDA Inspections: Part 3, Responding to Observations Magazine article from: Biopharm International ; ...leaving you with a list of its observations. Part 3 concludes the survival...response document. Responding to observations made by inspectors is often the...Developing a Response Once the final observations have been issued, the clock begins...
	Dependent Univariate Observations And Statistical Control Magazine article from: Quality Progress ; ...valid. For example, the assumption that the sample observations be collected from a normal distribution is often...for independently and identically distributed observations. Using such observations allows you to avoid many problems in the distribution...
	Multiview Cloud-Top Height and Wind Retrieval with Photogrammetric Methods: Application to Meteosat-8 HRV Observations Magazine article from: Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology ; ...Meteosat-5, Meteosat-7, and Meteosat-8. Observations by Meteosat-5 can be combined with observations from either Meteosat-7 or Meteosat-8 to...the poor time synchronization between the observations of the two satellites. On the contrary...
	Assimilation of Standard and Targeted Observations within the Unstable Subspace of the Observation-Analysis-Forecast Cycle System Magazine article from: Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences ; ...a very simple way to assimilate observations. The basic idea is that, in order...assimilation of all the available observations. The unstable vectors are then used both to target observations and for the assimilation design...
	Astronomers see South Pole as ideal site for observations Newspaper article from: The Boston Globe ; ...ideal location for certain kinds of observations, a scientist said yesterday. "A...also ideal for many other kinds of observations. Infrared astronomy, for example...best ground-based site for such observations -- even better than the peak of...
	Diurnal variation of the lower-tropospheric flow over the Arizona low desert from SWAMP-1993 observations Magazine article from: Monthly Weather Review ; ...and northwestern Mexico using observations from a special rawinsonde network...Southwest Area Monsoon Project. The observations show that the flow over the low...program (Howard et al. 1993). These observations, together with observations made...
	Effects of Secular Changes in Frequency of Observations and Observational Errors on Monthly Mean MSLP Summary Statistics Derived from ICOADS Magazine article from: Journal of Climate ; ...MSLP) statistics derived from ship observations can be affected by changes in the frequency of observations. The results show that when the number of observations is small (less than 20 per month...
	Fired up about Science.(scientific observations) Magazine article from: Science Scope ; ...ask students to make and record observations about the object in the baggie...object from the bag to make their observations. As they are doing this, I remind them that observations are not what they think the object...
	Assimilation of simulated Doppler radar observations with an ensemble Kalman filter* Magazine article from: Monthly Weather Review ; ...moisture, and condensate given only observations of radial velocity and reflectivity...forecasts, to assimilate radar observations at convective scales. In the basic experiment, simulated observations are extracted from a reference...