khannula
Posts by this author
August 20, 2009
Anne Jefferson, a hydro-geomorpho-climate geologist at UNC-Charlotte, has officially joined Highly Allochthonous as Chris Rowan's co-blogger. Anne's been unofficially co-blogging there for a while, but it's great to see her role made more official. And it's especially great to see someone with…
August 19, 2009
The August edition of Geological Society of America's monthly online news, GSA Connection, has just been posted. There's lots of useful news, but this one might be crucial:
Sign up now if you need childcare during the Annual Meeting!
If minimum attendance is not met, the program may be canceled,…
August 18, 2009
Geobloggers (and tweeters) are very social, but we often exist in our own world apart from the rest of the science bloggers. Here are some opportunities to remind the rest of the science-blogging world how cool we are:
1st: ScienceOnline 2010 is a conference devoted to science on Web 2.0 and to…
August 17, 2009
I've recently taken to using the magic of the internet to give my students access to readings, assignments, and images outside of class. It's great - if my sophomores lose their map, they can print another one. If a student misses class, there's no excuse not to do the homework anyway. If students…
August 16, 2009
Jim Lehane's comment on my last post just reminded me that it's Accretionary Wedge time again. Jim's hosting the geology carnival, and he's got a back-to-school theme:
So your mission is this: "What out of the box ideas do you use to teach people about geology or geological concepts?" No need to…
August 16, 2009
I'm the department Luddite. I use Powerpoint less often than any of my colleagues, and I'm the person who argues that rooms in a new building need to be designed to allow natural light and views when desired (as well as be able to be darkened adequately). But I'm also the person in my department…
August 14, 2009
I've recently submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation, and it's got me thinking about how I find ideas for research. The proposal was for an instrument to enable research*, and that meant that, for the first time in years**, I had to write something that could convince other people…
August 6, 2009
Geoscientists: we (Anne Jefferson, Pat Campbell, Suzanne Franks, and me) are looking for participants in a survey about the ways in which women geoscientists use blogs (both as readers and as writers). Here's the official request:
Over the past several years, the geoscience blogosphere has…
August 4, 2009
There was a mountain lion in the courtyard of a local elementary school playground today.
A mountain lion.
At the elementary school.
A neighbor called the police, who called the Department of Wildlife, who shot the mountain lion. A young male, about 75 pounds, probably recently headed out on its…
July 29, 2009
Earth Science Week 2009 will be October 11-17 (ending on the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake!). This year's theme is "Understanding Climate." There are photo, visual arts, and essay contests, and Thursday is going to be the first "Women in Geosciences" day. (And then Friday will be…
July 28, 2009
Last month, another structural geologist came to town to check out possible sites for a future field class. While we were out looking at one of my favorite teaching sites, he commented that geologists seem unusually willing to share their secrets with one another. (We had met at one of the Cutting…
July 23, 2009
I'm going to take a vacation tomorrow. I'm going to get up early in the morning, ride my bike to my office, and hunker down in front of my computer, putting some of my collaborators' contributions into a grant proposal.
What? That doesn't sound like your idea of a vacation?
What about last week,…
July 23, 2009
Jim Lehane at Dino Jim's Musings has posted the call for the August Accretionary Wedge: Time to think OUT of the box:
So your mission is this: "What out of the box ideas do you use to teach people about geology or geological concepts?" No need to limit yourself on ideas you have actively used. If…
July 16, 2009
Volcanista is hosting the July Accretionary Wedge at her Magmalicious Blog. It's all about how people became interested in geology. There are some great stories - check it out!
The next Accretionary Wedge will be in August, hosted at Dino Jim's Musings, about unusual teaching methods, tools, or…
July 15, 2009
While I was teaching my reworked upper division gen ed class earlier this summer, I decided to use a discussion technique that I hadn't used before: the
"http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/gallerywalk/index.html">gallery walk. It worked so well that I'm trying to figure out where else it might…
July 13, 2009
Chuck at the Lounge of the Lab Lemming has a good Monday-morning meme: bad geologic habits. What things do you forget to do - or do when you know you shouldn't?
I am probably an embarrassment to everyone who ever taught me*. Here's an incomplete list of my bad habits:
- Leaving gear at outcrops. (I…
July 9, 2009
Geophysicist Marcia McNutt, currently President and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, is going to be the next director of the US Geological Survey. She will join this group of people, who (as Andrew Alden pointed out), are all men. (Cian Dawson points out on Twitter that the…
July 8, 2009
Five students (three from the US, two from Brazil) were arrested last month while doing paleoclimate research in Brazil. They were collecting sediment cores from lakes and wetlands, in order to understand past climate change in western Brazil. The charges were based on Brazilian laws dealing with…
July 6, 2009
One of the tricky things to convey about rocks, especially in a lecture or in a textbook, is the way geologists can see such different things at different scales - from thousands of kilometers to a few micrometers - and the way that all those observations fit together to understanding the processes…
July 5, 2009
Ed Yong went to the World Conference of Science Journalists, and came back with both an award (yay!) and some thoughts on embargoes and science journalism. What's got me thinking is not so much the issue of embargoes - I'm not trying to compete with science journalists, and wouldn't have time to…
July 1, 2009
If you haven't been reading Photo Synthesis, which features a series of science photographers... well, you've been missing out. The latest photographer, BJ Bolender, has a series of gorgeous mineral photos from rock and mineral shows in Arizona. Go look!
(I've been out of town at a family wedding.…
June 23, 2009
The American Geological Institute's latest Geoscience Workforce Currents says that undergrad enrollments are up 8% this year:
Eight per cent actually isn't that much - one or two students, in most of the geology departments that I know. We've got nearly twice as many students registered for my…
June 21, 2009
Two summers ago, the extent of Arctic sea ice reached a historic low. What's it going to do this year?
Chuck at Lounge of the Lab Lemming has opened a betting pool. No money involved; winner gets to make him blog on a topic of the winner's choice. (This is a good prize; Chuck is funny.) Bets are in…
June 20, 2009
The call for posts for the July Accretionary Wedge, hosted by volcanista's Magmalicious Blog, is up!
So July's topic is about your inspiration to enter geoscience. Was it a fantastic mentor? Watching your geologist parents growing up? A great teacher, or an exciting intro field trip? How did it…
June 17, 2009
Science has an award for online education resources (cutely named "SPORE"), and they want nominations by June 30.
Here are their criteria:
Rules of Eligibility for SPORE-2009:
* The project must focus on science education.
* The resources described must be freely available on the Internet…
June 16, 2009
When I was designing my summer session class, I ran into a problem. If I really wanted my students to achieve the course goals, they would need to spend a lot of time on a computer. In a 3-times-a-week lecture course, I might expect them to do that work outside of class, but we were going to be…
June 14, 2009
The June Accretionary Wedge, "Let's Do a Time Warp," is up at Outside the Interzone. It's a crazy time-machine ride from before the Big Bang all the way into the tectonic future. Come along with the geology bloggers to a few of our favorite times.
(And, no, the Cretaceous-Tertiary Paleogene…
June 14, 2009
I've got a question for women readers, especially those in the geosciences, environmental sciences, or field sciences: what do you get out of reading blogs? And if you have a blog yourself, what do you get out of writing it?
I'm asking because there's a session at this year's Geological Society of…
June 10, 2009
There's a meme going around about plans for summer reading. While I was reading Sciencewoman's list, I realized that I was avoiding the meme. See, I didn't even manage to finish my spring reading list, so I'm not ready to talk about big plans for the summer.
I had good intentions. I read Dirt: the…
June 10, 2009
The deadline for the reactived geology blog carnival, The Accretionary Wedge, is coming on Saturday, June 13. The theme is Let's Do a Time Warp: if you could travel in space and time, to see the geologic past or the geologic future, on this planet or somewhere else, where would you go and what…