Good practice – or How to Get an A on the Blog
Take a look at what the students did in previous years (2010 & 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014); you might even try grading a few yourself using the Rubric in the Syllabus. A lot of student efforts are pretty average (particularly when they are left to the last minute). So make sure you model your efforts on the best. You can see many examples of good practice is you scroll through the enormous amount of stuff I have posted on my blog over the years (Get an A on the Blog). There are some good words of wisdom from the TA’s from previous years (2011 , 2012, 2013, 2014).
Ideas for Blog posts
There are also lots of great science blogs out there. A good portal to many of them is Science Blogs. Also good for ideas is Seed Magazine, The New York Times, National Geographic, edge.org, PSU Science and Research Penn State. But get goggling. Work the internet. Interview a scientist; there are thousands on campus. And think about your life and your major and what interests you that is science related and look into those things. If the topic doesn’t interest you, its really unlikely you will do a good job.
Articles
An absolutely excellent summary of what science is about and why it civilizes
Books
There are no set texts for this course. But I found the following easy-to-read books useful when putting the course together. They are all excellent, but Bryson is the most fun (although Olson comes a close second*), Sagan is the most important, and Burch is the most shocking.
Lectures
Four excellent lectures from one of Britain’s foremost scientists about the challenges facing science in the 21st century.Bill Bryson being brilliant about what he learned as a non-scientist about science and what it has discovered.*From p. 65: “There is a famous quote by Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, who heard a woman shout to him that all the thinking people in America were with him. He replied “That’s not going to be enough, Madam: I need a majority of the public.”
Last updated Aug 25, 2015