Science Communication

Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles 11: who knew that Tik Tok would become the social media star of 2020?

  Last January, before in-person undergraduate classes were cancelled in March 2020, my 8:30am Winter Semester Applied Plant Ecology lecture covered media literacy and science communication. We discussed where people get their news from, who is behind different media platforms, and the role of social media in public science education. I'm pretty sure it was […]

Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles 9: 2020's science-policy-politics-lessons

It's a year since scientists sounded the alarm about a novel, rapidly spreading coronavirus centred in Wuhan, China. Today, the New York Times published a review of the early events, in which politics over-rode the science, and some of the key doctors who first encountered what we now call SARS-CoV-2 virus, died as they warned […]

Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles 8: #AdventBotany VLOGs & BLOGs

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 […]

Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 5: Mourning what we have lost in this pandemic

Lost relatives, friends, careers, jobs and money The cancellation of plans that were long in the making. In the months since the SARS-Cov-2 virus has spread across the globe, people have experienced losses, big and small. I am sad to write, that so many are grieving for family and friends who died (increasingly, un-necessarily) from […]

Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 3: All Zoomed Out

Zoom is the platform that somehow won the online meeting software wars during the COVID-19 pandemic. I've previously used it, Adobe, Skype, Bluejeans, Citrix, GoTo, and many other platforms for virtual meetings, including doctoral defences, and webinars going back to the mid 2000s. via GIFER I've been climbing the Zoom pandemic pedagogy mountain since March […]

Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 2: creating good online courses takes resources

Since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down in-person classes across North America, conversations have proliferated about online learning and the time that it took to teachers to pivot to courses online. In early April, I decided I must come up with an online substitute for the cancelled in-person field courses that affected about […]

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 […]

Wikipedia Editathon Chronicles Part 2

In Wikipedia Chronicles Part 1 (January 30, 2018) I posted about my plan to hold a Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Visva Bharati University, West Bengal, India. I held a mini Ada Lovelace Day Wikipedia Editathon for my third Science Communication Workshop on March 20th. During my time (January to March 2018) as a visiting professor, I […]

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 […]

The Canada-India project, CIPRI, started with a conversation about the arctic

I have been in Delhi, and in one of its many surrounding suburbs (Greater Noida), this past week, with YorkU colleague, Dr. Nivedita Das Kundu, networking and building CIPRI (Canada-India Project for Research and Innovation) connections for the York Centre for Asian Research. Nivedita, a political scientist and International Relations scholar, lived, studied and worked in […]