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Re: "I’ve actually been teaching my 2nd grade son Math" - it seems to me you proved the parent poster's point: this type of scientific communication is better s

by dh2022 2y ago

Re: "I’ve actually been teaching my 2nd grade son Math" - it seems to me you proved the parent poster's point: this type of scientific communication is better suited for middle-school audience than university audience. A blog post seems more appropriate than posting it on arxiv.com with full academic credentials...

_yb2s 2y ago
Math education techniques are a legitimate field of research worthy of publication. Science education is an academic field that publishes just like any other. Arxiv is a preprint server and not a journal - they don’t discriminate based on “impact” or interest to a certain audience. If you want that, read a journal that meets your desired criteria. It is perfectly reasonable to publish methods for educating children, or even results intended for an audience of children in Arxiv. A key purpose of a preprint server is to circumvent gatekeeping.
itishappy 2y ago
Why? Because it's a "cheaper" medium? What's inappropriate about exposing middle-schoolers to approachable academic literature?
- _yb2s 2y ago
  Absolutely- there is no reason children can’t and shouldn’t learn science by participating as it is done by real scientists- reading and even writing and publishing their own papers. I am an academic PI and am involved within teaching science by directly involving undergrads and even school aged children in real research, and having them write and publish their own papers as primary author. The idea of gatekeeping science as not for children is awful in my opinion. Moreover, just because Minecraft is a video game doesn’t mean it has no place in real scientific research- it is a virtual world with a modular plugin system that can allow a researcher to create and interact with simulations of almost any type of system imaginable. People have executed realistic physics experiments, designed working cpus, etc in it. I think there is a lot of potential for really significant research within it.

by dh2022 2y ago

_yb2s 2y ago

Math education techniques are a legitimate field of research worthy of publication. Science education is an academic field that publishes just like any other. Arxiv is a preprint server and not a journal - they don’t discriminate based on “impact” or interest to a certain audience. If you want that, read a journal that meets your desired criteria. It is perfectly reasonable to publish methods for educating children, or even results intended for an audience of children in Arxiv. A key purpose of a preprint server is to circumvent gatekeeping.

itishappy 2y ago

Why? Because it's a "cheaper" medium? What's inappropriate about exposing middle-schoolers to approachable academic literature?

_yb2s 2y ago
Absolutely- there is no reason children can’t and shouldn’t learn science by participating as it is done by real scientists- reading and even writing and publishing their own papers. I am an academic PI and am involved within teaching science by directly involving undergrads and even school aged children in real research, and having them write and publish their own papers as primary author. The idea of gatekeeping science as not for children is awful in my opinion. Moreover, just because Minecraft is a video game doesn’t mean it has no place in real scientific research- it is a virtual world with a modular plugin system that can allow a researcher to create and interact with simulations of almost any type of system imaginable. People have executed realistic physics experiments, designed working cpus, etc in it. I think there is a lot of potential for really significant research within it.