One of the silver linings among the many dark clouds of 2020 was the large number of newspapers and magazines that made their pandemic-related content freely available to all readers. Their excellent, fact-checked, professionally-written content is usually behind a paywall. Some newspapers and magazines give readers access to a few free articles each month, with […]
Dawn's Blog and General News Items
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 7: How Humanizing Science Helps with Hallowe'en at Home
My favourite book by Charles Darwin is the one about worms (The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms: with observations on their habits: 1881). Today, Darwin is still a larger than life iconic figure, but thanks to his habit of writing in books, known as marginalia, we have insights into him as […]
Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 6: Returning to my lab. feels like finding the Marie Celeste
Canadian higher education has mainly functioned virtually since March 2020, when campus buildings were closed. The residential population of York University during this pandemic has consisted of students and their families, for whom their campus apartments are their main homes, and international students who could not get home at the end of April, due to […]
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 4: Addressing Black Lives Matter in our Courses
The day that in-person classes were cancelled at York University, was the same day that Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by policemen. They erroneously entered her apartment looking for someone who didn't live there. The police have still not been charged for the murder. I read a newspaper article about Ms. Taylor's death the […]
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 […]
Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 1: What is Exponential Growth Bias?
By the time the York University leadership cancelled in-person classes on Friday March 13, 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, I already knew that in-person April exams would inevitably be cancelled, along with in-person Summer Semester courses: the novel virus SARS-CoV-2 was entering its exponential growth phase by the time the pandemic was […]
