Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Medicine) have made progress, but not as much as expected, as Dr. Mildred Dresshelhaus explains in her interview with Science. Direct sexual harassment aside (discussed in part 3 of this blog series), the structural sexism of #STEM has greatly concerned me for decades, and, I am unhappy to report, […]
Social Media
Why I'm using Twitter as a teaching tool
Dawn Bazely at York University Teaching in Focus conference May 21-22 2015 from Dawn Bazely As a teen doing my homework with the tv on in the background, I would hear stuff like "you'll get square eyes", "don't be a couch potato" (image at left, from Wikipedia) and "it's the boob-tube". In other words, tv watching […]
Leadership & management lessons learned directing IRIS: Part 2
In 2006, when I took over as director of York University's Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS), I was very concerned with how to improve my skill set for effective leadership and management. In many ways, my experience as a sustainability researcher from 2006-14 was as much about observing and learning from other […]
I'm aiming to break my class out of the cycle of "memorizing & forgetting"
I haven't taught BIOL 4090.40, Plant Ecology for nearly 10 years. It's been shifted from Fall to Winter term, meaning the entire lab. component needed changing because of the different season, and now we're on Moodle, and we have #SoMe (social media), so it was time for a mega-overhaul. AND, it's week 2 of the winter term, […]
When to be an Early Adopter and when to be a Laggard: Part 1
This is an updated repost from the Madeleine Ewins A Day in the Life blog, that I guest-authored in August 2013. Since then, I discovered an amazing book all about Apple design from the early days, to the present, called Iconic. It's by Jonathan Zufi who founded the website, Shrine of Apple. (I'm not kidding! It's […]
Figuring out the link between Social Media and What I do as a Biology Prof
Anybody who has given any kind of cursory glance over this website in the last 2 months, will know that webpage construction has rather ground to a halt. The reason for this, is that I have spent a lot of time since mid-September, exploring and experimenting with social media, specifically Twitter. The impetus for […]
