lekowala!

One fieldtrip left and a seminar series at the science centre before the Biophilia programme draws to a close for the year. Hopefully we can run it again next year. The idea is to arouse biophilia in students, who otherwise would not have an authentic experience of nature here in Urban Singapore. But its more than that. Besides the place-based learning, the students come up with their projects here and all we do as part of that process is socratic questioning. Its a bit frustrating for students and its not easy to come up with a scientific question. But we’ve been to the fieldsite for about 5 times already and each time we spend about 3 hours there (what a blessing to have enthusiastic and supportive colleagues taking turns or even coming regular for this). We’ve seen some “ecological literacy” developing so that’s a nice development.

Here’s a pair of anemone shrimps. We found 2 pairs on two different anemones. They are delightful creatures to watch and they are, as we found out through the weeks on the Biophilia programme, almost always there when there is a submerged carpet anemone. They are known to wait out in a nearby pool if the anemone is totally exposed during the low tide, and return again.

This is the second time I have seen it in the flesh/carapace, and they provide a nice source of distraction from the world. The seem to potter about busily around the tentacles of the anemone and its been recorded that they fend off any outsider (be it a fish) that comes close to the anemone. So the pair’s highly territorial. Their almost transparent body makes them hard to spot but once you know there’s a high chance of spotting them beside the nice obvious bloom of the anemone, their movements give them away. The smaller one of the pair is the guy.

For much better pictures and a sciency account go to the Annotated Budak post

Nat Low and I were debating over this row of eggs. I had roughly remembered it to be some mollusc that would lay such eggs. She, being more cephalopod-biased, suggested it was too big for small snails… well not too big for the spiral melongena I guess.

Here’s a nice picture of the spiral melongena from Dai Jiao’s photostream in Flickr.

Because the tide was low, we decided to hope over to another stretch of rocky beach on the southern most point of Singapore and saw this pair of horseshoe crab doing their thing. What an interesting sight for students who have not even seen the creature before, seeing the mating ritual of the horseshoe crab. I am sure they, like me before, find it interesting to know that the horseshoe crab has blue blood, as unlike us, they have copper instead of iron as the prosthetic group to carry oxygen. The blue blood is very valuable as it has anti-bacterial properties that scientists have been studying. See the youtube video here.

Meet mer-dog, who appeared in my dream. In the dream, I was fishing and after a second cast of the line, I got a bite and I jerked the rod to get a strike.. it was a big turquoise and red fish… but lo and behold, as I reeled it up, I noticed that the head resembled my mum’s schnauzer - Emily. I quickly released the hook from its mouth and pet its head…. then the dream ended. Was it because I had, in that evening been to my mum’s place and while my dad, shaved my head, I was stroking Emily and staring at her.

Yesterday at the RICE talk, I whipped out this picture and related it to Biophilia, man’s innate urge to affliaite with other creatures. This was a talk I gave as part of a mini-symposium on “The open laboratory”. Siva and Cheng Puay were part of the team to give their own presentations on biology field-trips. Cheng Puay had finished way early but could have stretched a bit more as he was presenting those interesting fieldwork he had carried out over 3 year periods with students. Our rapport with the crowed wasn’t as we had liked it. Siva was the good boy, surprising us with a clear and well thought out paper.. I knew our rapport hung by a thread so when it came to my turn.. I whipped out the picture and spoke about how dream metaphors of animals were some expression of biophilia…

It was great to catch up with Thomas and Ivan Chew, my band-mate and intellectual and mega-blogger and secondary school classmate.

There is something fascinating about whales and dolphins. I remember giving a lecture in school on Lipids (an ‘A’ level biology subtopic) and as a digression, I told the class a story about Whaling in Nantucket in the 18th century. Its somewhat related to lipids as the whaling industry was mainly based on the lipid found in the spermaceti of the sperm whale. A large whale could provide up to 3 tons of that valuable wax which was odorless and non-oily to the touch.

Anyway, I played some sound clips of whales singing (yes, they do sing and in different dialects too, depending on which pod they belong to) and after that auditory experience, the students (about 300) clapped and cheered. There must be something mesmerizing about whales in our human psyche. I was glad to know that most students displayed a sense of biophilia, sensu E.O. Wilson.

Scientifically, Cetaceans are animals belonging to the Order Cetacea, which, include whales, dolphins and porpoises.

Actually the reason why I am posting here is because I came across this article about whaling in Japan and its just inexplicable that whaling still occurs. Hey, I understand if the Iñupiat Eskimos do it to survive (see my post on a book I read about Eskimo whaling) but to state scientific reasons for whaling is entirely beyond reasonable acceptance. Its like killing cats randomly and saying we need data.

Note this statement - “Over a six-month period, it will kill 1,000 whales as part of what it says is a scientific research programme.”

I am no whale fanatic but they are just lovely creatures. I have had nice dreams about dolphins and whales too and those were deep and meaningful ones for me. They at least represent the wonders that nature has produced. And at most, are inspiring to many people. Scientifically, the are really peculiar and interesting ends of the evolutionary tree. See link below about the recent fossil discovery that shed new light on the evolutionary research to trace which extinct land-dwelling mammals were the probable ancestors of Cetaceans

Ivan’s Dolphins Galaxia and Into the Deep feature some whale and dolphin sounds. They are so enchanting and give a sensitive dimension to the music.

My point is “Stop Whaling!”

I love songs when they are free. But I also think we need to buy them… or else how the musicians survive.. then again, some of them survive too well.

Here’s a free song from Queen entitled, “Say its not true”. Its really a heartfelt song about raising Aids awareness dedicating it to Mandela’s work.

Here’s a quote from the website -

“Taylor wrote the song as a gift to Mandela and performed it live for him for the first time with Brian May and Dave Stewart at the inaugural 46664 concert in Cape Town that month. The song carries the message that HIV AIDS is something that can affect any one of us no matter our sexual or racial status.”

Go download it. Click on the picture below to go to the website.

Was listening to an interview on the BBC about how this guy developed this website to feed the hungry and teach his son some vocabulary. The rice goes to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). Just makes me wonder about the food we waste each day…

Here’s a snapshot of the website. Click on image to go there.

I was hoping for a good book recently and when the book fair at the expo came along I bought 3. I finished the Monk who sold his Ferrari in about 3 days cos it was really easy to read and very interesting, just like the title itself.

What I really like about this book is the emphasis on what really matters in life, e.g., family, relationships with others, what you wish to really do in life. Its got also prudent strategies on how to gain self-mastery like, self-reflection, mindfulness. But what really strikes me was how the Sages of Sivana (hill monks in the book) practiced how to banish negative thoughts from their mind so that they could focus.

It was captivating for the 1st half of the book and then it became too familiar for me. But I guess it still is useful as a meaningful guide to try to better oneself.  Read more about the author and his company here –> www.robinsharma.com 

I hope Nathaniel’s Nutmeg and the Pope’s bio will read even better, especially the latter.

Its not as bad as the first time I went to UK for a Plant Systematics Course in Reading University way back in 1999, But I still feel it…. jet-lag.  Its a strange feeling to be awake when everyone else is fast asleep and I got to get up so early each day.  But I guess the experience of the conference more than makes up for it.

Preparing some revision lectures in Evolution.  It is the funnest topic ever but teaching it can be difficult cos it ain’t like molecular biology where everything tends to be more cut and dry.  Which is why I like Evolution again.  Cut and dry is fine but Evolution and chance and the endless possibilities of natural selection just does it for me.  Its a wondrous feeling to study it and find a weird creature like the aye aye.

Useful resources for teachers
I - Action Research (practical and personalised)
This is Prof Whitehead’s website.  Its a real useful and rich resource for practitioners (namely school teachers)

II - eTASC
I attended a workshop on e-learning tools and thought it would be the usual online tests, blogs, forum etc.  But turns out that the design the guys at londonGT.org used made good sense.  Their main approach is to frame a pedagogical learning method/thinking skill with e-learning tools so that at the heart of the excercise is the pedagogy and e-learning is not about using the computer but about learning skills. Thank God for common sense.  I have been to several e-learning courses but somehow this made sense and I took to it readily.

III - Over Excitabilities
One of the buzzwords that I came across frequently in the sessions over the 5 days.  Don’t know what to make of it as yet but will have to read more… if I have energy and time.  But as always, Philosphy or Psychology of Teaching and learning is always interesting as you also begin to realise more about yourself anyway.  So self-awareness (-interest?) is somehow satisfied, which is admittedly a good kind of feeling.

Check out Kazimierz Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration for more info on OEs.

There was a pre-conference workshop that was really engaging.  It was facilitated by a Professor from the University of Bath and his speciality was on Philosphy for Children.  He gave and account of this learning strategy TASC which is currently quite widely used as a learning tool in UK for students to grasp certain concepts.  Apparently, there was a group of 6 year olds who when shown this concept, decided that there were some changes that had to be made as the learning cycle didn’t suit them.  So they modified the framework and made it more 3 dimensional to suit their needs.

I thought that showed quite a high level of self-awareness by the children.  It was a highly engaging workshop and the agenda was based on the 15 min inquiry session from the 30 or so participants.

Another interesting thing to note was that Socratic questioning may be a fine tool but very  often it the teacher using the tool tends to have know the answers, so that the questions may be loaded.  Interesting insights into teaching philosophy.