ScienceBlogs

KABTer’s,

A growing resources for keeping up with biology is a site known as ScienceBlogs. This site, sponsored by a new science magazine, Seed, brings bloggers with a science theme into one site. It has grown to be a tremendous resource. However, I doubt that it will pass school district filters since these bloggers cover more than just science topics–they cover politics, biology controversies and religion as well. and often they do not censor their own variety of speech. Each of the bloggers have some kind of expertise and had successful blogs before they joined ScienceBlogs.

So how does a biology teacher make use of this site. One quick and easy step would be to check in each day and click on the “Biology” link in the left column. This would take you to the most recent posts with a specific biology focus. Personally, I simply click on the “Last 24 hours” link to view all posts over the last 24 hours. Remember, these folks are publishing their opinions and informed understanding of new research, controversy and such. Not one of the bloggers would expect you to agree with them all the time, nor would they expect you to take their word as the last word on a subject. Read these entries with a critical eye and view this as the process of science. You’ll be able to get in on some of the controversies that you didn’t know existed in biology.

Finally, start with the Science Basics list. This list was a challenge that went out to this community to try and cover just the basic concepts in a field. I haven’t read all of them but some are quite good and some I don’t find so good. Overall, though, I think it is a great place to beef up your own understanding of basic science so that you can pass it on to your students.
BW