Captain Green Mom saves the day!

One of the classes I taught this semester was Biological Writing. As I understand it, the way a lot of my colleagues teach this class is that it is very focuses on some traditional academic writing. I think some of my colleagues even have students write mini grant proposals.

I wanted to shake things up and expand things to scientific communication. I was inspired by the student videos at Shifting Baselines (masterminded by Randy Olson, author of Don’t Be Such A Scientist, which I reviewed here). So, I asked my students to pitch an idea, then make a short video. The target was to make the video one minute (excluding credits).

This project had some issues as a project, mainly arising from that it is necessarily a group project. Group projects are always tricky because of social loafing and so on. I don’t know quite yet how to refine it if I do it again.

But...

They rose to the challenge! (This is not the only video project from the class, but is the only one that students put on YouTube.)



Someone wrote someplace that the boomers and Gen X watch TV, but millenials make TV. This is a good example. I talked with my students about story, but all the technical stuff – the sound, the effects, the editing – they worked that out themselves.