On November 5, it was bring your kid to work day for Grade 9 students. My oldest son (Kobe) wanted to participate, so I created a fun-packed (I thought) day for him.
The highlight for him: siting in on Sho and Nick’s Biodiversity class. At dinner that evening, he could tell us all about what he learned in that class.
The lowlight for him: my biostats class. Hopefully I have not ruined statistics for him.
Last November, Marina and Amanda went to Kobe’s school to givea hands-on demonstration of microbes. The science teacher who invited them then nominated their activity to the Let’s Talk Science CIHR-Synapse award, a national competition. And they were selected as one of the 4 best showcase activities! And in the accompanying picture, you can see Amanda, Marina in the background, and my son Kobe with the spiderman sweater. How cool is all that?
Recently, I found myself eavesdropping on two elderly fellows debating an age-old question: does size matter? Yes! declared one. Small ones have never satisfied anyone. It needs to be big!You’ve got it all wrong,countered the other. Proper use of a small one can be just as good as having a big one. And what good is a big one if you don’t use it properly?/o:pIn a nearby lecture theatre the Costa-Rican Mermaid was preaching the power of long distance swimming to promote big ones.
Amanda and Marina created a module to introduce Grade 1 kids to microbes for the programLet’s talk science. They picked a very challenging subject to introduce something we cannot see to 6 year-olds. However, they pulled it off very successfully using pictures, glow-in-the-dark powder and black lights, and a couple of microscope. I joined them for the final presentation (in my son’s class), and these are the pictures I took.
I am Ingrid, a returning member of the Cottenie lab. This is my first post, and it comes at one of those in-between times in my life. I am in between finishing a two-month bike tour and starting a three- (or four, or more…?) year PhD. It’s been an interesting process, returning from the tour and re-integrating back into society.
First, a little about the tour. It was one of the best and most challenging things I have ever done.
This is an article in the Globe and Mail that struck a cord with me, "Ten years that shook, rattled, rolled and helped repair the world" by Doug Saunders. If you do not have the time to read the full article, you can click on this shortened version with most of the salient points summarized in a concept map structure (make sure to click on it to see the bigger version so that you can actually read the text ;-):This article provides a very nice example of the 10th Cottenie Commandment: Thou Shalt Listen to thy Intuition, but Follow the Data.
Is it possible that grade 3 kids are more interested in zooplankton than 3year university students? Click here to find out.