NCSE Roundup: This Week in Evolution & Science

This week in evolution and science, the National Center for Science Education's team describes how teaching science is a community affair.

The NCSE Teams Up with Bible Camp

NCSE member Stephanie Keep is busy lately promoting the Science Booster Club Project designed to get the community involved in supporting local science teachers.

In what Keep describes as a first for her and possibly the NCSE in general, one of her first partners in the endeavor was a Bible Camp.

Keep and two interns taught climate change for two hours to a whopping crowd of 123 children.

"Raising community support for science is the goal of the Science Booster Club Project. As we reach out to communities to help them organize their support of local teachers, we would be foolish not to partner with as many pro-science community organizations as possible. If you listen to too much of the same media or spend your life trapped in an internet bubble, you might not think local religious organizations would make good partners for an organization like ours. But they are," Keep said.

Keep and her team's work prove teaching science is a community affair that everyone is willing to get behind for the benefit of the community's learners.

Read more here. 

50,000 Teacher and the NCSE

According to Minda Berbeco,NCSE is launching a new network called NCSETeach in order to mobilize and support the science teachers out there in the face of science denial.

"NCSE has over 30 years of experience defending the teaching of science in public schools, whether it is taking on legislators when they introduce bills that would allow the teaching of creationism, ensuring that textbooks present science accurately, or helping communities organize to support good quality science standards. But we believe we can do more—notably, doing more to support science teachers," she said.

The NCSETeach "will bring science teachers together, allow educators to connect with one another (and NCSE staff), guide them to good-quality and well-vetted resources, share stories of how they have dealt with challenges to science education and also connect them to early career scientists as a resource and partner in advancing the scientific enterprise."

Find out how to join and read more here. 

Learning about Xenarthra: The Almost Perfect Clade

If you want to learn fun facts about armadillos and sloths and anteaters and pangolins and even aardvarks, look no further.

This week, Stephanie Keep is discussing the Xenarthra clade and why there is the absence of the pangolin.

Read more here. 

The Not-So-Partisan War on Science

This week, NCSE member Josh Rosenau read something that really grinded his gears.He reflects on a post from William Saletan who argues that fears and concerns over the safeness of Genetically Modified Organisms despite science proving otherwise is an attack from the left.

Rosenau, on the other hand, argues there's no partisanship in GMO concerns.

Read his full post here.

Compiled by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

07/24/2015