My thoughts on biology, teaching, life, and exploring the living world via the digital one. Only my opinions are represented by these postings, they do not represent the viewpoints of any funding agency or Geospiza, Inc.
I am a digital biologist, teacher, and entrepreneur. My passion is developing instructional materials for 21st century biology (Digital World Biology).
If you're a high school or college student with an interest in biomedical sciences, or healthcare careers, the NIH has set up an electronic mentoring program to help you find a guide.
The mentoring happens via email and students must be 16 yrs or older.
The site claims the mentors are carefully screened. I'm not sure what screening means to the NIH. At our local high school, they used to require that mentors get fingerprinted and have a background check. Maybe NIH screening means you have to have gotten a grant funded or be registered in the NIH commons.
Please note: the program is open to US students and professionals only.
One of my hobbies lately has been to get either RNA seq or microarray data from GEO and do quick analyses. Not only is this fun, I can find good examples to use for teaching biology.
One of these fun examples comes from some Arabidopsis data. In this experiment, some poor little seedlings were taken out of their happy semi-liquid culture tubes and allowed to dry out. This simulated drought situation isn't exactly dust bowls and hollow-eyed farmers, but the plants don't know that and most likely respond in a similar way.
We can get a quick idea of how the plants feel about their situation by looking at the data in a volcano plot.
Last summer, I had the good fortune to attend a conference in Washington D.C. on Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology education. There were lots of inspiring speeches, cool videos, and talks about building more student-centered classrooms and strategies for change.
Surprisingly, many of the attendees seemed unaware that there is a group of instructors, and educational programs who embody this vision, albeit with a bit of twist.
These are the biotech instructors and biotech education programs at the community colleges.
Many of the ideas described at the Vision and Change conference as our goals are already common practice in community college biotech programs.
Hands-on labs with authentic science? We got 'em.
Internships? yep.
Asking students for their opinion? This is new?
Part of the reason that community colleges can be more innovative is that there are fewer constraints. We don't have 300 person lecture classes. We don't have to prepare our students for the MCAT or GRE.
We also have a different attitude. We don't view a job in the biotech industry as "dropping out of science." Since community college programs measure their success by their employment stats, they have to innovate, focus on what needs to be taught, and teach it well. You don't cut your lab classes when your students are going to evaluated by their work in the lab.
This summer, Suzie Montgomery from Utah Public Radio interviewed biotech instructors, who came from across the U.S. to attend the Bio-Link Summer Fellows Forum. Her 30 minute radio interview provides more insight as the Bio-Link educators tell their story.
Biotechnology educators gather in Berkeley, California, from across the US, to discuss new trends in biotechnology education, learn from each other and share information about educating students for the biotechnology workforce.
There are tours of local biotech companies like Genentech and local research institutes like the cancer center at UCSF. New kits and techniques can be tried and practiced in hands-on workshops. And instructors get to practice new bioinformatics techniques like analyzing Next Generation DNA sequencing data or working with data from microarrays.
This year Bio-Link has 18 fellowships to attend the conference. The fellowships cover registration costs, accommodations and meals.
If you would like to be eligible for a fellowship, it's time to apply.
Information about the conference and a link to apply for a fellowship are available at www.bio-link.org
One of the many interesting sessions I attended at ScienceOnline 2010 (#scio10) covered the questions of trust and critical thinking.
Sitting in the audience, I couldn't help but think of a mash-up (like on Glee!) between this session the one on Fact checking.
Granted, I know I'm a nitpicky scientist with an obsession for minutiae but I kept hearing statements during the session that I either wondered about or I knew were completely wrong.
Here's our first mashup tweet from docfreeride from David Dobbs:
Writing 1st book, description of bit character in mid/late 60s... after book came out, found out she was 48. D'oh #scio10
Have you ever wanted to volunteer your talents and help with fun projects like these:
* Refurbish computers for schools
* Teach students how to use popular software or online services
* Build a database for a nonprofit
* Help out in your school's computer lab
* Become an online mentor for students across the country
In the spirit of MLK day, Serve.gov is calling on educators and tech people to participate in connecting schools and non-profits with tech needs to those who can help. You can use the widget below to find projects in your area.
To quote Serve.gov, and Dr. King:
"Life's most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?"
BTW - MLK day is only the beginning. The projects will last more than one day.
ScienceOnline 2010 was one of the most amazing meetings I've attended in a long time and it's going to take some time to process it all, but in the mean time, it seems other bloggers (phylogenomics, CogSci, and Ed) have started one of those meme things and so, here goes.
At ScienceOnline 2010, I learned:
More than I ever wanted to know about the intimate details of duck sex. courtesy of Carl Zimmer!
That meeting all you - bloggers, educators, librarians, mathematicians, journalists, scientists - in person would be more wonderful than I could imagine.
Thank you all and extreme kudos to Bora and Aton! I can hardly wait for ScienceOnline 2011!
Hey readers, did anyone learn anything unexpected either at ScienceOnline 2010 or via all the social media?
Okay, I'll grant that visiting Second Life can seem a bit uncomfortable, especially at first, but it does open some new doors and present an alternative to travel.
In flu season, virtual visits could be the next best thing to being there. (Yikes, that sounds like an ad. No more yahoo news for me!)
Is there a place for citizen scientists in the world of digital biology?
Many of the citizen science projects that I've been reading about have a common structure. There's a University lab at the top, outreach educators in the middle, and a group of citizens out in the field collecting data.
After the data are collected, they end up in a database somewhere and the University researchers analyze them and write papers. At least that's my impression so far.
It seems to me, that with all kinds of databases out there, on-line, there should be plenty of opportunity for both citizens and student groups to participate in analyzing the data.
A common theme I hear in talks on personalized medicine, is that increased access to genomic data and medical literature are changing the relationship between doctors and patients. Patients are through being passive recipients of paternalistic health care. They are demanding to participate and be treated as partners with health care providers.
Citizen science can serve a similar role.
Just as personalized medicine is starting to make it possible for individuals to monitor and participate in their own personal health, citizen science is making it possible for people to participate and monitor the health of their communities.
With our environment endangered by growing concentrations of CO2, and global climate change happening faster than predicted, these efforts are timely and greatly needed. The best tool we have for fighting ignorance is to get citizens involved in science. I'm sure we'd have fewer people believing silly things on Fox news if they were doing experiments and looking at the world outside instead of listening to ideological nonsense on TV.
Communities don't have to be passive receptacles for pollution and waste. They don't have to sacrifice biodiversity for development or clean water and air for jobs. They can make a choice.
Making good environmental choices however, depends on information. You can't protect or monitor the environment without knowing what's in it. Citizen science empowers communities by making the scientific process transparent and allowing citizens to become involved.
Thank you all for posting an amazing collection of links to citizen science projects going on throughout the world. I never realized there were so many projects out there. It's encouraging to know there are so people out there who care about our world.
I am a digital biologist, teacher, and entrepreneur. My passion is developing instructional materials for 21st century biology (
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