Calling All Teachers

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.

Comments

[Daniel deRegnier, MS, MT(ASCP)]

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

[Bethany D. Jenkins]

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.