At age 6 I learned to read. I read about dinosaurs from a set of children’s science and nature books. A small story about T-Rex was the first one I read all by myself. After that a steady flow of childhood interests varying from dinosaurs and astronomy to Egyptology ended up on my dedicated notebooks […]
Gender equality in science
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Science is evaluated by it’s quality. At least that is the ideal. In reality, there are a lot of biases and inequalities in play. While exploring the topic in Connected Courses I stumbled upon a recent report on women in academic science. This report by Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams highlights the early educational experiences […]
Tools matter – daily drawing challenge
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I took part in doodling my way through the Connected Courses: Daily Connect art challenge. I chose power point as my tool and noted that it really affected what I chose to draw. I tended to use much more repetition than in physical drawing, but also explored the colors more. Despite the tools of the […]
Do I really need a smart phone?
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My phone is not smart. It is entirely functional. It is small and has the battery lasts for a week at a time. I can call, text, and take photos intermediate quality. Hailing from Finland, the 90′s Nokia phones are the standard I compare all my phones. And I am not alone in this. While […]
The platform of web belongs to the people
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After watching the documentary “Aaron Swartz Internet’s own boy” it seemed to me that the people in high power positions and in charge of law lag behind on the current internet culture. And it is not only internet culture, it is the whole atmosphere in society. For a while the interest of young people in […]
Web as a basic human right should have a built in responsibility of curation
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Is web and access to web a basic human right like freedom from torture or the right to a fair trial? People seem to think so. And my home country Finland was the first country to include it in the law in 2009. It does make a lot of sense when we consider the basic […]
Nugget: Illusion of well-oiled machines and predictable serenity
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We live in a world that works well if the pieces are stable and have predictable effects on one another. We think of complex institutions and organizations as being like well-oiled machines that work reliably and almost serenely so long as their subordinate pieces perform their designated tasks. -2002 David Weinberger “Small pieces loosely joined” […]
Can I really protect learners online? Or should they do it for themselves?
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After reading Jonathan Worth’s “does my data show in this” and listening to the IT security expert Ben talk about our data being used for less charitable purposes by companies and individuals, I freaked out for a good while. How much responsibility am I really taking on when moving my class online? What is the […]
Your life is not a scantron sheet
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Last week I listened in on the online seminar by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, the writers of Academically Adrift and Aspiring Adults Adrift. After reading Excellent sheep by William Deresiewicz, these books are a breath of sensibility. While Excellent Sheep is entertaining, it lacks the data driven conclusions Arum and Roksa are able to […]
Why do I want to teach?
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When I thought about the reasons for teaching, learning, and working; I came to a surprising self discovery. All of my “whys” grows from my love for science. The attention to detail, diamond-like shapes of protein crystals (see above), the beauty of single molecules, and rhythm of biological processes. But the esthetics is not why […]