This article examines the reconstruction of human foibles in picturebook adaptations of three popular Aesop's fables: "The Ants and the Grasshopper", "The Lion and the Mouse", and "The Hare and the Tortoise". Adopting adaptation and globalectics perspectives, the author illustrates how social hierarchy is…

This activity provides opportunities for middle school students to design bio-inspired, eco-friendly vehicles. Twenty-four 8th grade students (12 girls, 12 boys) engaged in the activity which was implemented in four class periods, 40 minutes each, in an elective Environmental Education course. During the activity, students engaged in engineering…

Apps are becoming increasingly important in education. However, critical educational research has hardly ever undertaken up-close analyses of educational apps. This article provides an extensive analysis of one 'learning to code' app called Grasshopper. Drawing from the field of Science and Technology Studies, the article adopts a theoretical…

This article briefly sketches the evolution of live animal displays in twentieth- and twenty-first-century U.S. museums of science and natural history, in order to show how these exhibits function as a sampling device for changing postwar pedagogies of science learning. Live animal displays have been, more often than not, interpreted by both their…

Recent experiments have shown that people iconically modulate their prosody corresponding with the meaning of their utterance (e.g., Shintel et al., 2006). This article reports findings from a story reading task that expands the investigation of iconic prosody to abstract meanings in addition to concrete ones. Participants read stories that…

This article provides a case study of a participatory science project that involved collecting observations of a giant grasshopper and registering them online. Our objective is to reflect on conditions for meaningful amateur engagement on Web 2.0 science platforms. Our overall approach is qualitative and ethnographically informed and draws on…

The lesson described herein is the result of a partnership between a teacher and an entomologist brought together by a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded grant that paired teachers and researchers to impact K-12 STEM education through partnership and innovation. This collaboration resulted in five lessons featuring live insects such as…

Charles Sherrington identified the properties of the synapse by purely behavioral means--the study of reflexes--more than 100 years ago. They were subsequently confirmed neurophysiologically. Studying reflex interaction, he also showed that activating one reflex often facilitates another, antagonistic one: "successive induction," which has since…

Instilling an appreciation of nature in our youth is an important precursor to environmental protection and support for sustainability. Research has shown that involving students in environmental projects improves their motivation, skills, and achievement on standardized tests, This document contains images of the body parts of small mammals with…

This year's more than 4,000 Portraits of Learning entries attest to the growing comfort with digital technologies and visual arts that today's kids have. This article presents 12 winning student photos of the Portraits of Learning 2007. The winners emerged from the selection of subjects that varied wildly--from grasshoppers, giraffes, zebras, and…

Describes the archaeological reconstruction of domestic life in Grasshopper, Arizona, a mogollon pueblo community which began around 1300 A.D. Categories of space and domestic activities are discussed. An analysis of variations in the patterns of household types within the pueblo is included. (AM)

A way of teaching the scientific method to elementary pupils, using animal life collected by students. (SP)

Two investigations are reported regarding grasshoppers and their behavior. Procedures and data are included and materials for further work are available. (PS)

Briefly described are 25 "hands on" classroom activities which require live, freshly killed, or preserved grasshoppers. Topics of activities include predator-prey relationships, feeding habits, locomotion, dissection, anatomy, and population estimates. (DS)