2 Comments

Call­ing All Teach­ers

by Elio

As the school year be­gins, we would like to hear from you about uses that you may have for this blog in your class­room. We think that the ma­te­r­ial here lends it­self par­tic­u­larly well to use as sup­ple­men­tal readings─providing in­tel­lec­tual en­rich­ment to stu­dents who de­sire it. The blog has been men­tioned in class syl­labi, usu­ally un­der "Fur­ther read­ing" or "In­ter­est­ing ma­te­r­ial" or some such head­ing. And in­deed, this ac­cu­rately de­picts one of its uses.

But we would like to en­cour­age you to con­sider var­i­ous other uses, as well. We know of sev­eral more ac­tive ways in which the blog has been uti­lized al­ready.

For ex­am­ple, Mark Mar­tin writes:

One of the as­sign­ments in my course (ju­niors and se­niors) is to read a spe­cific "mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cally rel­e­vant" pa­per closely, and pre­pare a two page sum­mary. The stu­dent groups (two to a group) work on read­ing the pa­pers and prepar­ing the summary/outline. Then they present it to the class, com­plete with il­lus­tra­tions and a catchy ti­tle.

How to find good pa­pers to as­sign to the stu­dents? Well, I need in­ter­est­ing, cur­rent "gosh wow" pa­pers in­volv­ing mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. And I see plenty of those kinds of pa­pers on STC! So please keep up the good work! Your blog is in­deed a pow­er­ful re­source for mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy ed­u­ca­tion.

In a grad­u­ate mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy course which I co-di­rected, the stu­dents had the op­tion to se­lect the fol­low­ing as one of their exam ques­tions: Write a piece about the Planc­to­mycetes for the blog. Four did just that. We edited their work, striv­ing to pre­serve their "voice," and posted the re­sult here.

An­other blog that has a spe­cific ped­a­gog­i­cal pur­pose is the Mi­crobe­Wiki. To quote from their blog:

Ed­u­ca­tors: You may as­sign Mi­crobe­Wiki page cre­ation and edit­ing as projects for your stu­dents. We cre­ate a tem­plate page for your as­sign­ment, which you may edit to meet your needs.

We would be de­lighted if you would send us your thoughts, ex­pe­ri­ences, and sug­ges­tions about the use of mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal blogs, in­clud­ing ours. We will post your com­ments here for our read­ers to also share.

 

Other Posts

  • Ar­chaeal Nin­jas

    Pic­tures Con­sid­ered #29 by Elio — Among the mi­cro­bial world's most un­usual struc­ture is a pilus-like fil­a­ment that looks for all the world like strands of barbed wire with a three-pronged grap­pling hook at the end. Dis­cov­ered in 2005 by Moissl and col­leagues stick­ing out from an ar­chaeon, this struc­ture has been called the hamus (pl.: hami), which is Latin for claw, hook, barb, or fish­ing rod.

  • The Bac­terium That Doesn't Know How To Tie Its Own Shoelaces

    by Elio — A greater mi­cro­bial won­der­land there isn't than the one in­side cells of in­sects. Many, per­haps most, in­sects har­bor bac­te­r­ial en­dosym­bionts that are full of phys­i­o­log­i­cal, ge­nomic, and struc­tural sur­prises. To con­firm our predilec­tion for the sub­ject, go to Search on the right of this page and en­ter "en­dosym­bionts." Or...

  • Strep­to­myces spores tak­ing a ride...

    by Christoph — Strep­to­mycetes, these non-motile Acti­nobac­te­ria that are ca­pa­ble of mycelial growth much like fungi, are quite in­ven­tive when it comes to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of their spores. They don't just rely on en­chant­ing scents like geosmin that they emit to at­tract spring­tails, which trans­port their spores over long dis­tances (see Roberto's re­cent post). They also rou­tinely em­ploy bac­te­r­ial trans­port work­ers.

  • Hello Again, Me­tab­o­lism!

    by Amy Cheng Vollmer — Years ago, path­ways of in­ter­me­di­ary me­tab­o­lism made up a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of bio­chem­istry and mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy courses. Therein, stu­dents learned about in­ter­con­ver­sions and con­nec­tions be­tween path­ways, and they could fol­low the car­bons as they moved from ac­etate into the cho­les­terol mol­e­cule...

  • Prophage Mas­quer­ade

    by Merry Youle — Roseo­var­ius nu­bin­hibens re­cently joined the ex­clu­sive club of about a thou­sand bac­te­ria whose genomes have been se­quenced. Why this honor? It's a mem­ber of one of the most ubiq­ui­tous and most in­tensely stud­ied clades of α‑Proteobacteria, the ma­rine roseobac­ters. This pop­u­lous group...

  • A Close En­counter of the Eno­log­i­cal Kind

    by John In­gra­ham — Early in my ca­reer, by good for­tune, I en­coun­tered the mal­o­lac­tic fer­men­ta­tion. In­ves­ti­gat­ing it by stan­dard micro­bio­logical meth­ods led to re­sults that changed the way Cal­i­for­nia red wines are made, for the bet­ter most agree. How sat­is­fy­ing it is to think that I was fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Pas­teur, no less, and his early ca­reer...

2 Comments
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Bethany D. Jenkins
18 years ago

I just came across your blog and wanted to thank you for con­tribut­ing such a breadth of in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing many dif­fer­ent as­pects of mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. I'm go­ing to be teach­ing an ad­vanced mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy course this spring and I'm ex­cited to be ref­er­enc­ing your blog.
Thanks again for spend­ing the time to do this.

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Daniel deRegnier, MS, MT(ASCP)
17 years ago

I pe­ruse Small Things Con­sid­ered for items I can use in my Di­ag­nos­tic Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy courses. I can usu­ally find some­thing, but many of the posts are be­yond the level of my courses. I have the great for­tune to be ed­u­cat­ing the fu­ture, en­try level MTs and MLTs who will staff our clin­i­cal mi­cro labs. My hope is that some of them will go on to earn ad­vanced de­grees in mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, but at this stage they may still strug­gle with re­mem­ber­ing the ba­sic bio­chem­i­cal ID of com­mon or­gan­isms or what to look for in a rou­tine spu­tum cul­ture and what to do next. STC is great re­source, nev­er­the­less. Thanks for the ef­fort of all those who post.
Daniel,
We are glad that you found merit in the blog. Our prin­ci­pal aim is to fos­ter an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the won­ders of the mi­cro­bial world for one and all.
Elio

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