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Interactive, Collaborative, Quantitative Biochemistry Education in the 2.0 Era
BioQUEST Resources, Teaching and Learning | (0)
07.26.09

Today Srebrenka Robic and I presented at the 23rd Annual Protein Society meeting in Boston at their Educators Luncheon. Attached please find a copy of our presentation (pdf or ppt).

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What’s a blog?
BioQUEST Resources | (0)
03.11.09
So, you can take this question literally and answer it with the wikipedia definition. However, the best description I have found describing a blog is by Andy Carvin at the PBS Teachers blog. As a jumping off point I have excerpted the beginning of his post here:

May 22, 2006

What Exactly is a Blog, Anyway?

by Andy Carvin, 12:01PM

If you don’t know what a blog is, you’re not alone; according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly two-thirds of Internet users don’t have a good idea of the meaning of “blog.” In case you fall within this group, you’re in luck, though – you’re looking at a blog right now.

But this is just a website, right? Yeah, I get that a lot. On several occasions while doing workshops with both educators and non-educators, people have asked me if blogs are just websites. Yes, it’s true, blogs are a type of website, but there’s more to it than that.

continue reading Andy Carvin’s post …

So what is the “more”?
- Blogs Offer Independence AND Togetherness
  - An online content management system – such as the WordPress platform that we are using – frees up daily dependence upon a web developer, designer or administrator. The software installs in — no kidding — 5 minutes. You can update your own content and post media such as images, video, slideshows, and podcasts with minimal effort.
  - Multiple people can share in the maintenance of the blog. No need for multiple copies of expensive HTML editing software, FTP’ing files, and worrying about over-writing each other’s versions of the document.
- Blogs come in hundreds of different flavors
  - Whether you start with the “classic” or “default” themes that come pre-installed or select from the many, many, many freely available themes, you can change the look and feel of your blog with a touch of a button. For example, compare three of our blogs: SCOPE, Summer2009 and BioQUEST.org.
  - Many enjoy the built-in features that allow for a very visual presentation of your content, while others enjoy its ability to maintain a public diary which invites and supports a dialog with its readers.
  - Some enjoy the fact that Wordpress (the most prevelent blog software) is an open-source (i.e. community) project which invites people to create plugins to add features. We are currently using plugins that do things like support forms (e.g., Where Are We? Evolution Survey) and automated page translation (just click on one of the flags near the top of the page).
These are just some of the “more” that bioquest.org is trying to take advantage of. Please take the time to tell us what you think about what we are doing by sharing a comment on this page!

Next time we will share some information about how to find your way around in a blog. All that dynamic content requires some new surfing strategies.

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BioQUEST Blog Update – March 11, 2009
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03.11.09
Pea image by zaser shared under (cc).

Welcome back! This is the second BioQUEST Blog Update and we have a great collection of resources and materials to share again this time around.

First, a quick thank you to all of you who shared notes of encouragement and interest with us after the first update. We have started to refer to the blog as the cyber-BQNotes, in reference to our print newsletter, because it is an important tool for sharing information with the community. The biggest difference is that the blog updates are much easier to produce and they accumulate over time as new content on the web site.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions drop us a line at bioquest@beloit.edu. You can also use this address to sign-up to receive these updates via email (or to stop receiving them). We send out updates every 2 weeks and we will never share your contact information without your permission.

In this BQ Blog Update we are excited to highlight:
We also want to remind you:
- Apply Now for the BioQUEST Summer Workshop
- The Where Are We? Evolution Survey will close on March 18.
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BioEd2009: A Report From New Zealand
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03.09.09

Tony Weisstein (Truman State University) just returned from the IUBS BioEd 2009 meeting in New Zealand and shares his take on the meeting in this post. The meeting had significant BioQUEST representation with John Jungck (Beloit College) and Pete Lockhart (Massey University) co-chairing the meeting, Ethel Stanley (Beloit College) and Tony leading sessions.

A Report from BioEd 2009

The International Union of Biological Sciences’ annual educational meeting, BioEd 2009, was held in Christchurch, New Zealand, from Feb. 12-15. These dates were chosen to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, and 2009 also marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species. The conference’s theme, Evolution in Action, was thus highly appropriate.

Caption: The All Blacks, New Zealand’s national rugby team, performing a haka. Credit: Murrayfield7

The conference opened with a powhiri, a traditional Maori welcome featuring a ritual challenge, singing, and feats of agility. Several brave participants also volunteered to take part in a haka or posture dance, with greatly entertaining results. After cutting a birthday cake and pulling crackers for Darwin, participants had the opportunity to see the premiere of the play “Collapsing Creation,” about the challenges Darwin faced in publishing his theory.

Conference participants represented a unique balance between evolution research and teaching: high school biology teachers comprised about 25% of the participants. Sessions on preparing teachers for evolution education and Darwinian medicine helped bridge this divide, interweaving insights from current research with new pedagogical strategies. For example, an overview of human settlement patterns in the Pacific based on genetic and archeological data (Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, Allan Wilson Centre, New Zealand) might be followed by a lesson plan for speciation in which students conduct experiments that directly challenge their own naïve views of unchanging species (Lee Traynor, Leibniz University, Germany). This mix of topics led to some fascinating teatime and dinner discussions on methods for bringing current research into the classroom and engaging students in active and collaborative learning.

Caption: Pete Lockhart, Ethel Stanley, Tony Weisstein and Holly Gaff (Old Dominion University) pose with the Darwin Cake. Credit: John R. Jungck.

The four plenary lectures were also well chosen to span a diversity of topics while representing the organization’s international character. Presentations included Darwin’s systematics work on barnacles (John Buckenridge, RMIT University, Australia), strategies for adapting primary literature for classroom use (Anat Yarden, Weizmann Institute, Israel), evolution education and the nature of science (Douglas Futuyma, SUNY, USA), and sexual selection in the evolution of human mating systems (Alan Dixson, Victoria University, New Zealand). The conference wrapped up with the play “Unnatural Selection”, performed by four very talented New Zealand high school students, and a preview of October’s IUBS meetings in Cape Town, South Africa.

Several high school teachers in attendance mentioned how much they enjoyed the opportunity for in-depth conversations with researchers, and many research-oriented participants equally appreciated the ideas for new teaching strategies. In response to this demand, the organizers established a blog to help maintain the collaborations begun at the conference. The conference also highlighted one other challenge common to many international societies, including SMB: the language barrier. The IUBS has taken an excellent first step by linking their website and associated materials to a web-based translator. Given the international nature of such conferences, any additional strategies for facilitating multilingual presentations could greatly enhance the experience for speakers and participants alike.

Dr. Anton E. Weisstein
Biology Department
Truman State University
weisstae@truman.edu
http://www2.truman.edu/~weisstae/

Editor’s Note:

Thanks to Tony for sharing this meeting wrap-up. The following links have more information:
BioEd 2009 – the meeting website.
The Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology & Evolution – hosted meeting (they will have links to the meeting resources posted soon).
The International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) – sponsored and organized meeting. IUBS is a non-governmental, non-profit organization, established in 1919 that promotes international and interdisciplinary cooperation in biological sciences research.

This report was originally written for publication in the Society of Mathematical Biology Newsletter edited by Holly Gaff. Thanks to Tony and Holly for making it available for posting here as well.

You can find our original posting on the meeting here.

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BioQUEST Blog Update – Feb. 25, 2009
BioQUEST Resources | (1)
02.25.09

Pea image by Phil Price shared under (cc).

You are currently reading the first BioQUEST Blog Update. We are pretty excited about using our newly designed web site to share information with the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium Community. However, us sharing information is just the start. Our goal is to use this site to build community-wide interactions. Sure, it won’t happen automatically. We are all in the process of exploring the emerging social media to figure out how to make them work for us. What better place to explore and share than with a community of teachers interested in rethinking undergraduate biology education? We have been around since 1986 and we plan to stick with this for a while longer. Please consider joining us.

If you are not currently receiving updates by e-mail and would like to just let us know [bioquest@beloit.edu].

The e-mail version of this update included additional information on the following posts:

APPLY NOW BioQUEST Summer Workshop 2009: Green Architecture – Green Curriculum

Where Are We? Evolution Survey

ActionBioscience: An issues approach to biology

Darwin Resources – Part 1

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