teaching
sporte | February 9, 2008A long standing debate in my field is whether or not biologists, who work with computers, need to learn how to program. I usually say "no." Let the programmers program, the biologists interpret the results, and let everyone can benefit from each other's expertise.
Well, I've changed my mind in one respect. Most biologists need to work with some kind of database these days and I've discovered that it's really helpful to know something about SQL. Even a tiny bit of SQL, like "SELECT * from table" goes a long, long way.
This revelation didn't happen overnight and when I decided a few…
grrlscientist | February 8, 2008tags: Evolution: Education and Outreach, evolution journal, open access evolution, teaching, education
There is a new journal about teaching evolution that is now available and it appears to be completely open access, too! This journal, Evolution: Education and Outreach focuses on promoting accurate understanding and comprehensive teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience, although it specifically targets K-16 students, teachers and scientists. This journal is actively seeking contributions of (1) peer reviewed evolutionary science; (2) peer-reviewed educational papers on curricula…
grrlscientist | February 2, 2008tags: blog carnivals, teaching
The 2nd edition of A Teacher's Life Blog Carnival is now available for you to read and enjoy. And yes, they did include a submission from me. This blog carnival is not big enough, though, so if you have something to contribute to the next carnival, you should get over there to learn where to email your contribution.
sciencewoman | January 30, 2008In my upper level course this semester, I am really trying to interject personality into the lectures and discussions. By personality, I don't (just) mean humor and compassion. What I also mean is that I am trying to convey that our subject matter is an area of active research, done by (gasp!) real people.
I started the term by giving the "old white guy tour," summarizing the historical development of the field and some of the key figures that have contributed. I called it the "old white guy tour" which at least got a smile from one or two of my students. I wanted to acknowledge that I was…
sciencewoman | January 15, 2008Having previously taught (and described) my intro class, my other course this semester has been occupy most of my mental and physical energy of late. To compound the amount of work required, I am also teaching the labs for the course.
The course is taught every year at Mystery U, and from here on out, it will be my course every other year, alternating with another faculty member. For both of us teaching the course, the topic represents a secondary area of research. The other faculty member provided me with copies of his labs and a >10 year old syllabus. Since the textbook, and the field in…
grrlscientist | January 8, 2008tags: academe, professor on food stamps, academic poverty, streaming video
I thought my employment situation was solely due to some mysterious and horrible flaw that is obvious to everyone except me, but here is a man who has the same complaints and problems, almost word-for-word as I have, except he actually managed to get tenure -- after ten years of living in poverty in the academic system. However, I doubt I will be so lucky as to get a tenure-track position (provided that I manage to survive that long)! [5:17]
Like this guy, I was also told not to take money from the public coffers (in…
sciencewoman | January 8, 2008I'm teaching two classes this semester: one introductory course which is a repeat from last semester and one upper-level course with laboratory, which is a new prep.
The intro course: I was reasonably happy with how this course went last semester, so by-and-large my goal is to put minimal preparation effort into the course. That said, I couldn't quite manage to leave the course alone.
For details, venture below the fold.
Last semester, I gave both on-line (blackboard) and in-class quizzes. It was a lot for both the students and me to keep track of. Plus, while the paper quizzes provided a…
sporte | January 2, 2008When in doubt, turn to the internet.
In a couple of weeks, I'm going to start teaching my first on-line course. So far, I've been preparing by:
learning how to use Blackboard
getting a subscription to iFinch so we can do bioinformatics in style, and share data and other files
getting a microphone and some software for making video podcasts
But, since this is brand new and I'm used to seeing students face-to-face, I have a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I do not want to be one of those people who simply puts lecture notes on a web site.
So, I'm turning to you for advice dear…
pontiff | December 7, 2007Addition, for me, is intimately connected up with my concept of a number. When I think of numbers in my head, I often think of the number in connection with its constituent parts, and when I divide these parts up into equal pieces I "get" multiplication. However, on top of this bare bones thinking, I also conceptualize numbers strongly by their size, thinking about the number first as the most significant digit in the number and proceeding down to the less significant digits. Which makes me wonder, do we teach addition backwards?
The standard grade school algorithm we are taught for adding…
sciencewoman | December 5, 2007I just caught my first piece of plagiarism. On a throw-away 10 point assignment that required students to write only 2 sentences. That the student in question copied directly from Wikipedia. How dare they!
pontiff | November 30, 2007...is finding a homework stuck to my door, with duck tape, along with the note "Gone to Mt. Baker" (Mt. Baker is a local ski area.) Actually this reminds me of a policy I've always wanted to try: require every student to NOT attend class at least a few times a term. The idea being that it is actually beneficial to at least try to teach yourself the material without guidance from the teacher. Many students probably can learn on their own, but never try, because they equate doing well with attendance. Nudging these students towards that realization, I think, might actually be a good thing…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2007tags: hawk-headed parrot, red-fan parrot, Deroptyus accipitrinus, clicker training, streaming video
As some of you know, I recently added a four-month-old hawk-headed (red-fan) parrot, Deroptyus a. accipitrinus, to my household. I plan to learn how to clicker-train this bird (I already have the necessary tools and books). Below the fold is an example of another young Hawk-headed parrot, named Scooter (owned by Jeannie), who was approximately eight months old in this video. This training session reinforces and refines earlier training where Scooter was taught how to place a ring on a peg, to…
sciencewoman | November 28, 2007Yesterday in class my students filled out one of those stereo-typical bubble sheet evaluations that supposed to tell me (and the administration) something meaningful about my teaching abilities. I won't see those results until after grades are turned in, but that's OK with me because I didn't find the questions asked on the standard form particularly useful.
Plus, I gave my own evaluation a few weeks ago and those results are already in.
So how's my teaching going?
31% of students said that my general performance was excellent, 47% of students said it was good, 19% said it was acceptable,…
grrlscientist | November 23, 2007tags: hawk-headed parrot, red-fan parrot, Deroptyus accipitrinus, clicker training, streaming video
As some of you know, I recently added a four-month-old hawk-headed (red-fan) parrot, Deroptyus a. accipitrinus, to my household. I plan to learn how to clicker-train this bird (I already have the necessary tools and books). Below the fold is an example of another young Hawk-headed parrot, named Scooter (owned by Jeannie), who was approximately seven months old in this video. This training session reinforces earlier training where he learned how to place a small ball into a bowl. You can even…
sporte | November 20, 2007Which read(s):
1. contain either a SNP (a single nucleotide polymorphism) or a position where different members of a multi-gene family have a different base?
C
2. doesn't have any DNA?
B
3. is a PCR product?
A, B, and C. All of three reads were obtained by sequencing PCR products, generated with the same set of primers.
The quality plots that I refer to are here.
sporte | November 19, 2007Since DNA diagnostics companies seem to be sprouting like mushrooms after the rain, it seemed like a good time to talk about how DNA testing companies decipher meaning from the tests they perform.
Last week, I wrote about interpreting DNA sequence traces and the kind of work that a data analyst or bioinformatics technician does in a DNA diagnostics company. As you might imagine, looking at every single DNA sample by eye gets rather tiring. One of the things that informatics companies (like ours) do, is to try and help people analyze several samples at once so that they can scan fewer…
grrlscientist | November 16, 2007tags: hawk-headed parrot, red-fan parrot, Deroptyus accipitrinus, clicker training, streaming video
As some of you know, I recently added a four-month-old hawk-headed (red-fan) parrot, Deroptyus a. accipitrinus, to my household. I plan to learn how to clicker-train this bird (I already have the necessary tools and books). Below the fold is an example of another young Hawk-headed parrot, named Scooter (owned by Jeannie), who was approximately seven months old in this video. This training session focuses on teaching the bird how to place a small ball into a bowl. [4:14]
sporte | November 16, 2007As many of you know, I'm a big fan of do-it-yourself biology. Digital biology, the field that I write about, is particularly well-suited to this kind of fun and exploration.
Last week, I wrote some instructions for making a phylogenetic tree from mitochondrial genomes. This week, we'll continue our analysis.
I wrote this activity, in part, because of this awful handout that my oldest daughter brought home last year. She presented me with an overly photocopied paper that showed several protein sequences from cytochrome C in several creatures. She said she was supposed count the…
sporte | November 15, 2007DNA sequence traces are often used in cases where:
We want to identify the source of the nucleic acid.
We want to detect drug-resistant variants of human immune deficiency virus.
We want to know which base is located at which position, especially where we might be able to diagnose a human disease or determine the best dose of a therapeutic drug.
In the future, these assays will likely rely more on automation. Currently, (at least outside of genome centers) many of these results are assessed by human technicians in clinical research labs, or DNA testing companies, who review these data by…
sporte | November 13, 2007The Wired Campus has an interesting article on nursing students at Tacoma Community College. In John Miller's class, the students practice interviewing patients in Second Life.
This sort of activity, of course, is one that could be carried out in a classroom, but I can see the advantages of having student interview other "people" who are for the most part, strangers. It will be a different and valuable experience.