I've been touting the benefits of blogging for developing student writing skills, ever since 2006, when I learned how to write posts for the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability website, after I became its director. On my return to full-time teaching in 2014, I immediately added Blog writing assignments to all my Biology […]
Blogging
My #SciComm (not Cricket) Tour of India, Bangladesh, Australia & Pakistan
There truly is nothing like a well-planned and structured sabbatical for giving professors the intellectual and emotional space to reflect on and crystallize what their previous five to six years of long days and hard work has been most fundamentally about. This is why, in my view, where they still exist, the sabbatical should be […]
Digital Divide Chronicles Part 3
This is the last leg of my four-month sabbatical trip to Asia and the southern hemisphere. I've met wonderful new colleagues, taught incredible students and learned a huge amount. I've been in India (2.75 months) with a side-trip to Bangladesh, Australia (3.5 weeks) with a side-trip to New Zealand. Now, I'm in Pakistan for […]
Digital Divide Chronicles Part 2
I began my career as a field ecologist on the remote shores of Hudson Bay, where I spent between two and four months off the electrical grid for five successive summers (1980-84). That's me at far left, with a rifle for polar bear protection. A generator charged the car battery that powered the radio that […]
Blogging helps students AND professors to write more clearly
I didn't do much undergraduate teaching when I was director of IRIS (York University's now closed Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability). My course releases enabled me to attend loads of meetings in place of lectures, where I ate A LOT of baked goods 🍩. I also ground my way through piles of financial, […]
