Did field guides help you develop a passion for natural history?

Posted on April 30, 2012 | 5 Comments

Does this happen to you? …. I get a warm fuzzy every time I see that stack of field guides on my bookshelf:

Some field guides on my bookshelf

This has me thinking about what sparked my interest in biology and more specifically, natural history. A lot can be attributed to my childhood – which was idyllic. I grew up in Lakefield, Ontario, and spent a lot of time playing in streams, old fields, and forests, and summers always included canoeing and camping. I recall, from a very young age, that my father would always point out ferns, mosses, trees, birds, dragonflies, etc. After pointing out these plants and animals, he would then proceed to pull a field guide out of his backpack and together we would flip through the pages and learn about what we were seeing. My father was not fixated on any one group of plants or animals, and his collection of field guides reflected this. Sometimes he would bring along a guide to birds, other times it would be for mosses and ferns. It didn’t matter which one he happened to bring along – they were all amazing.

Now, as an entomologist/biologist, and as someone with a career in the field of natural history, I can say with confidence that this exposure was really important. Although my father had the most significant influence on my interest in biology, I do think that the field guides played a role in sparking my passion for natural history. The field guides opened the door to a world of diversity, and allowed a young boy to recognize a variety of sophisticated concepts about species: white pine trees are widely distributed and they looks similar (but not identical) to other species of Pinus, some butterflies are common while others are rare, the common loon is only around in the summer because it migrates, species have many names (including one that is difficult to pronounce, and that has two parts to it). A field guide is a treasure-trove of dense, concise and attractive biological data, and ‘real’ field guides help children appreciate biodiversity to an impressive level of detail. I think this is why part of my proposal for a ‘backyard biodiversity project‘ included the purchase of authentic field guides.

We can learn a lot from field guides, and I am a little concerned that the digital age is changing the way people interact with “guides” to nature. Mobile apps, and other on-line tools are wonderful (e.g., the Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification) and provide access to a large audience, but they don’t allow for the tractable hands-on process of flipping through a guide without an agenda and without focus. The physical process of using a field guide allows you to (accidentally) learn about species that you may not have otherwise searched for. Having a variety of field guides on the bookshelf, and out on the coffee table, can really spark an interest in natural history and potentially change someone’s life.

I am very keen to hear other stories about field guides… do you attribute your own passion about natural history to a past connection with field guides? Please share your experiences!

(you can comment, below, and/or use the hashtag #fieldguides on Twitter)

                                                                 Thank you, Dad.

At the Arctic Circle, with my Dad.

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What’s that spider on my ceiling?

Posted on April 26, 2012 | 10 Comments

A few weeks ago I wrote about a “fashionable urban jumping spider” – one that is found inside and outside of your homes.  Today I wanted to focus on two other synanthropic spider species that tend to be very common inside our homes, and more specifically, on the ceiling, and with a particular fondness for crown moulding.  You probably already know exactly what I am talking about – small (< 1 cm in length), cream-coloured spiders that build silken retreats at the junction between walls and ceilings, and that often scurry up and down walls and around your house.  These are most likely one of two species within the family Miturgidae, in the genus Cheiracanthum.  Here’s a lovely photo of C. inclusum taken by Spider Joe  (thanks for the permission to use this photo! You can view more of his work here)

Cheiracanthum inclusum - photo (c) J. Lapp, reproduced here with permission

In North America, the two species of Cheiracanthum that you may find in your home are C. inclusum and C. mildei.  Searches on the Internet (and sometimes in the scientific literature) reveal that these are commonly referred to as “yellow sac spiders“.  This common name is largely a hold-over from when Cheiracanthum was previously within in the family Clubionidae, which are all commonly called “sac spiders”.  The yellow part obviously refers to their cream-like colouring.   Personally, I think that “ceiling spider” is a better common name, because that’s where they are very commonly found.

Almost every house that I go into has Cheiracanthum tucked away up in the ceiling, and I think most Arachnologists would support this claim.  This means there you are most likely living in very close association with these spiders every day, and that they are likely distributed across most of (populated) North America.

The million dollar question: do they bite humans?  Any of you that have been following my blog will know my opinions about spiders biting humans.  I argued previously that spiders bites are exceedingly rare, and attention should be paid to more likely causes.

          By the way, that previous post has received a lot of attention, and I was rightfully accused of using a provocative title.  It’s true – I did use that extreme title on purpose, in part because I feel it important to contrast the incredible volume of misinformation out on the Internet about  “deadly” spiders.

Another photo of Cheiracanthum inclusum (C) J. Lapp, reproduced here with permission

There have been seven reported bites by Cheiracanthum in the literature for continental North America, including one case in Canada (Alberta, reported on by Leech & Brown in 1994) and they are summarized in this article by Rick Vetter and colleagues (2006).  The symptoms presented include pain, redness and swollen area around the bite mark, mild pricking sensation, itching and some nausea.  As Vetter et al. point out, “Effects of Cheiracanthum envenomation should be referred to as mild or moderate…”, and “…almost all Cheiracanthum bites hurt similar to bee stings..”.  So, yes, they can bite, and it hurts, and the symptoms disappear within a few days, at most.  What is most important to point out is that bites from Cheiracanthum are extremely rare – especially since these spiders are living in homes all across North America.  This blog post should, therefore, cause you to not worry about these spiders in your house.  If they really liked to bite humans, there would be hundreds of verified bites, and they would be occurring all the time. This just doesn’t happen. I do not consider it to be under-reporting, given the general hysteria about spiders.  This quote by Vetter et al. sums up this sentiment very well:

“Unfortunately, circumstantial evidence presented in the spider bite literature often evolves into convention (and incorrect) medical wisdom.  it is disconcerting to repeatedly see an almost predictable misconception where a medically inclined audience read reports that clearly state “suspected”, “probable”, or “reported” in alleged bite incidents, yet will transform this non-definitive data into conclusive proof of spider involvement”

Next time you are watching that lovely Cheiracanthum wandering around on your ceiling, just remember that it’s not a real threat to you, and it is fun and fascinating to watch.  It is catching annoying flies for you, and providing some natural biological control in your own home. Keep them around! Cheiracanthum have a lot of helpers, also:  I have documented a about ten different species inside my house over the past few years and I’m sure you have a similar diversity of house spiders, if you look hard enough.  I’ll have to write about a few more of those species sometime in the future.  Stay tuned!

References:

Leech, R. & T.M. Brown. 1994. The first Alberta record for Cheiracanthum inclusum (Hentz) (Araneida, Clubionidae), with observations on a human bite reaction.  Can. Entomol. 126: 187. http://pubs.esc-sec.ca/doi/abs/10.4039/Ent126187-1?journalCode=ent

Vetter, R.S., G.K. Isbister, S.P. Bush & L.J. Boutin (2006) Verified bites by yellow sac spiders (genus Cheiracanthum) in the United States and Australia: where is the necrosis?  Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg. 74(6) 1043-1048. http://www.ajtmh.org/content/74/6/1043.full

To learn some more facts about ‘venomous spiders’, visit Rick Vetter’s site or this site from the Royal Alberta Museum.

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The beauty of museums: whales, birds, biophilia and a tweeting Dinosaur

Posted on April 23, 2012 | 2 Comments

A HUGE inflatable whale at the Canadian Museum of Nature

This past weekend, I traveled to Ottawa to visit the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN) with my family. I’ve been to the CMN a few times before, and each time there are new things to see – this weekend it was the special exhibit titled “Whales Tohora“.  The content for this exhibit was effectively presented and we spent a long time learning about whales.  I was particularly impressed with how the exhibit dealt with the difficult issue of “whale strandings” i.e., when whales sometimes get stranded (sometimes in large numbers) on beaches or other low-laying coastal areas.  It’s a tricky situation because we (the all-knowing and all-powerful humans) want to save them, but it’s not always possible, nor is it always appropriate to do so.  The exhibit showed how some people and cultures see these strandings as a ‘gift’ from the ocean whereas other people are deeply saddened by such events and rally to save the whales.  The CMN did not shy away from tackling this issue, and they did it in a way that all three of my kids (ages 8, 10 and 12) were able to appreciate.

The rest of the whales exhibition was also enjoyed – from the tiny Hector’s dolphin skeleton to the life-sized blue whale heart (a plastic model, of course!), and we all learned about ambergris (and got to see and smell it, too).  I think I can now properly articulate the differences between porpoises and dolphins thanks to a huge poster illustrating all the groups from a phylogenetic perspective. And my kids were thrilled to learn how whales were terrestrial before they were aquatic. Go, Evolution!

Part of the CMN bird gallery

Whenever we go the CMN we always visit our favourite exhibits and the Bird Gallery is one of these.  This gallery is bright and expansive, and is filled with stuffed, dead birds. I must be honest – I really enjoy seeing all those dead animals.  This may sound morbid, but this kind of display really resonates with me.  The best way to illustrate biodiversity is to have biodiversity on display, in an open, and accessible way.  Specimens are needed to bring people closer to understanding and appreciating biodiversity.  I did observe some people playing on the interactive computer terminals and reading some of the content on the poster boards. Most people, however, were simply staring intently into the glass cases and looking in awe at the shapes, sizes and colours of bird biodiversity.  This happens in the bird gallery, but also in the mammal exhibit, where some terrific dioramas illustrate species in their natural habitats.  The CMN has got it right with these kinds of displays.

Being a good entomologist, we made sure to stop by the Animalium (too bad it is a bit hard to find, tucked away in the basement next to the theatre) to see some live Arthropods (and slugs and amphibians, too):

Up close and personal with some bugs and slugs

I am glad that they have live Amblypygids (aka tailless whip scorpions) to view (they are so bizarre-looking!), and seeing people squirm in fascination at the tank full of wriggly mealworms is terrific.  When seeing these reactions, I am reminded of E.O. Wilson’s arguments about the “Biophilia” Hypothesis. This is the innate and instinctive connection that people have with the natural world.   It is so obvious when you go to a natural history museum, especially somewhere like the Canadian Museum of Nature, where you can see a displays about the death of whales in one corner, stunning dioramas in another, and live cockroaches in the basement.  People wander through the galleries, and when they see displays of nature that make them feel good they have smiles on their faces.  They recoil and squirm at other times – and it is with the usual suspects (e.g., spiders, snakes, bats).  This visceral and squeamish reaction is STILL a reaction and this fills me with hope.

The day that Museums are empty and people have no reaction to biodiversity will, to me, represent a world that has completely lost its way.  Let’s keep supporting museums and help maintain biophilia.

A small part of a grassland diorama at the CMN

I can’t talk about a museum without mentioning the Dinosaur gallery.   It is very well done and the CMN, and you could hear the squeals of delight from a hundred feet away.  And I was pretty excited to get a tweet from “Vic the Dino“.  You can follow this mighty beast on twitter @VicTheDino

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Food-web ecology at its best: spiders, springtails and leaf-litter decomposition

Posted on April 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

As mentioned in my post last week, Prof. David Wise from the University of Illinois at Chicago visited McGill. In this post, I want to cover some of the science that was discussed during his visit, and I will focus on some of the take-home messages from his research seminar which was about “Spiders, decomposition rates, and global climate change“.

A litter-dwelling wolf spider (Lycosidae, Pardosa mackenziana)

This topic has held the interest of ecologists for some time. There has long been an assumption that spiders have the potential to indirectly affect litter decomposition rates through their predation pressure on soil invertebrates that are directly involved with breaking down deciduous leaf litter. Interestingly, some of the early work on this topic was done in Quebec, at McGill’s Gault Nature Reserve (Mont St Hilaire). In the late 1960s Clarke and Grant removed spiders from leaf-litter habitats and documented an increase in the assumed “spider food”, including Collembola (springtails). Although the work by Clarke and Grant was unreplicated and had other methodological issues, it did get a lot people into thinking about these interactions (and trophic cascades).  This, by the way, is a marvellous photograph of a springtail.  You can visit this site to see some more lovely images (thanks, Ashley!).

A lovely springtail, (c) A. Bradford, reproduced here with permission.

A few years ago, David Wise and his student Kendra Lawrence followed up on this important topic with well-designed experiments, and they showed that spiders do indeed affect litter decomposition rates: it is a classic trophic cascade. Removal of spiders resulted in increased numbers of collembolans and this increased the rate of litter loss.  Here’s a figure from that paper:

A Figure from Kendra and Lawrence's paper. "FSR" refers to a spider removal treatment. The increase in rate of litter loss for this treatment is quite clear.

The effects of spiders on springtails is, I would argue, a fairly generalized result. I also was able to document this result with some work I did in Alberta. When juvenile wolf spiders were added to small enclosures, the numbers of collembolans decreased. This was a nice result, but because it was embedded in a paper about competition (or, rather, lack of competition!), I think that result is sometimes overlooked. I really like this particular graph from my paper (shameless self-promotion, I know!):

At the end of the season, when juvenile spiders were added to treatments, there were fewer collembolans.

You might think that the work could stop there – i.e, the relationships between spiders and collembolans has been established, as has the indirect effect of their predation on litter decomposition. Kendra Lawrence and David Wise did not leave this alone. Instead they completed a longer-term study of the same interactions, and it’s a good thing they did! In their follow-up paper, the experiment was extended over a 17 month period. In this work, they reported an opposite effect – leaf-litter disappearance was actually LOWER in spider-removal plots. That is sobering. Ecologists, this is a clear signal – do field experiments over longer periods of time, and expect the unexpected!

So how does climate change fit into this? David Wise showed us some of the work that he did with his student Janet Lensing. In this research they manipulated ‘rainfall’ in enclosures to which spider number were manipulated, to see if the trophic interactions outlined above were affected by precipitation. This was done because one of the key predictions of climate change includes higher variation in rainfall. Interestingly, they showed (in their paper published in PNAS) that not only was the trophic cascade affected by rainfall (i.e., higher rainfall decreased the strength of the trophic cascade), but also that the effects depended on the ‘sites’ (originally planned as replicates),  located very close together.  Ecologists: be careful about what you assume are ‘replicates’!

Figure from the PNAS paper on spiders, rainfall and trophic cascades

David Wise and his students have illustrated that leaf-litter habitats are ideal model systems for studying food-web ecology. They have uncovered some fascinating interactions (many more than I have written about here – you can visit this site to get a list of some more publications) and there are clearly important interactions between spiders, collembolans, litter decomposition, and these interactions are affected by rainfall. To me, it was most fascinating that these effects can vary within a few hundred metres in a single forest and their work illustrating a reversal of the effects of spiders on leaf litter loss is very important. Ecologists working in deciduous leaf-litter systems must study their systems for a long time, and be careful during site selection.

That is sound advice.

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The Biodiversity Challenge: A “backyard biodiversity” project for your local elementary school

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 2 Comments

Earth Day is approaching and it is, therefore, an appropriate time to think about ways to share the wonders of biodiversity.  Here is a proposal that was accepted by my local elementary school last year.   This proposal is about an inexpensive and effective way to make biodiversity science accessible and fun for a LOT of children. Please use this approach at your local school! Think big: let’s get schools across the country involved in a “Backyard Biodiversity Challenge”. All it requires is a few hours of your time, and most anyone that works in the field of biodiversity science can pull this together without much difficulty.  A small investment with potentially huge payoffs for our planet.

What is below is text that was used for part of formal proposal to my local elementary school – it needed to be approved through a number of pathways – please take this text, and modify it to meet your needs.  This exercise can be done without the purchase of field guides, but I felt having ‘real’ field guides available to the students was important.  In part, because such field guides were very influential in my own life, and helped to draw me into a life-long passion for biodiversity.

A 'biodiversity' card, done by a student in Grade 1

Backyard Biodiversity

Biodiversity is all the living things around us. Biodiversity is Life. It’s important for our well-being, and helps make a healthy planet. Biodiversity can be discovered by anyone at any age, and I would like to propose a school-wide activity about discovering biodiversity in your own backyard. An activity about biodiversity is also linked closely to Earth Day, Green Team activities, and helps promote a strong environmental ethic in students.

Learning Objectives:

• Hear about the concept of biodiversity, what it means and why it is important.
• Discover biodiversity “hands-on”, and in proximity to your school.
• Observe nature and write or draw about it.
• Produce a school-wide mural of biodiversity.
• Enrich environmental thinking for all students and staff.

The activity will have two components. First, Chris Buddle, a Professor at McGill University, who works in the field of Biodiversity Science, will deliver a school-wide 30-40 minutes presentation about Biodiversity. This presentation will help define the concept in an accessible manner, and will illustrate why biodiversity is important to all of us, and to the well-being of the planet. The presentation will include a photographic journey about biodiversity, from the rainforests of Panama to the high Arctic tundra. At the end of the presentation, Chris Buddle will outline the second component: a school-wide biodiversity challenge. The challenge will be an individual-based activity in which students will produce a natural history card about a species of interest. Each student will receive an index card, upon which they will discover a species in their local environment and write/draw about it. There are many different options, from birds they see in the schoolyard, to trees, to butterflies passing through, to grass on the playground.

Another example of a Natural History card, this one done by a Grade 3 student.

Different grades can adopt different approaches to the index cards: kindergarten students can simply draw a picture of their species; Grade 6 students can write the species name, draw a picture, and provide natural history facts (e.g., where it is found, what it eats, its biology). If teachers are willing and interested, the challenge can be adopted as a classroom project. For example, within a class, each student can be challenged to find and describe a different species so the class will have its own diversity of species. The activity will conclude several weeks after the challenge is initiated. Each index card from each student can be taped to a visible and accessible wall in the school; they can be arranged by obvious groups (e.g., plants, birds, insects) and left up for all to see.  In this way, all students can see the wall and the diversity of species can be easily viewed. It will be visually stunning, and will allow students to make a direct link between the individual species they discovered compared to what others have discovered.

Timing:

The biodiversity presentation can be linked as close as possible to “Earth Day” in April, and the challenge can start from then and run until later in the spring. It will be important to have the start of spring align with the challenge.

Resources:

• The presentation will be free; all is needed is some organization by the school about timing, planning, and technical assistance (e.g., a projector and screen would be required)
• Teachers will need to be willing to facilitate the preparation of the index cards. The idea is to document as much biodiversity as possible; to be effective, it would be ideal if teachers can help students find/explore different parts of biodiversity. Again, this activity could be linked directly to other parts of the curriculum.
• Index cards
• Field Guides: two sets of scientific field guides for a wide range of plants and animals. One set will be for the library; the second set will be housed with the Green Team. Students can access these field guides to help them discover biodiversity. Investment in “real” (i.e., professional style) field guides is potentially a life-long investment since some students will carry the love of biodiversity through their entire life. Many biologists trace the root of their career to flipping through field guides when they were young. The following field guides are suggested (approximate prices in Canadian dollars, are from http://www.amazon.ca):
o National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America (~$21)
o Kaufman Field Guide to Mammals of North America (~$16)
o National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees-E: Eastern Region (~$16)
o A Field Guide to Wildflowers: Northeastern and North-central North America (~$17)
o The ROM Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Ontario (~$16)
o Mushrooms of Northeast North America: Midwest to New England (~$18)
o Kaufman Field Guide to Butterflies of North America (~$16)
o A Field Guide to Insects: America North of Mexico (Peterson) (~$17)
o A Field Guide to the Beetles of North America (Peterson) (~$17)

Total Cost: approximately $154 x 2 = $308

Summary

The concept of Biodiversity is central to the health of the earth, and is linked very closely to a larger environmental ethic for society.  Yours is a perfect school to adopt this kind of school-wide activity; it’s small, close to nature, has an active Green Team, and is in an environmental conscious town. This activity may also draw positive press from the local media; it will be visually appealing, and has the benefit of student engagement at all grades and ages. The students will remember their “species” forever, and the school, overall, will gain awareness about biodiversity in their own backyard.

Note:  I originally posted this text about a year ago, on the Biological Survey of Canada’s blog about “Hosting a Biodiversity Event”, found here. 

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The Bug Geek meets Spider Man

Posted on April 13, 2012 | 4 Comments

Prof. David Wise, from University of Illinois at Chicago, visited our laboratory yesterday.  David Wise is a very well known community ecologist, and is also an influential spider ecologist.   On a personal level, David Wise influenced my academic career significantly, and I have long been inspired by his work.  His book “Spiders in Ecological Webs” remains an important piece of work (he was also the external examiner for my PhD).

David Wise gave a nice seminar in our Department, and I will write a post next week to share some of the knowledge we gained from that and from other interactions with him.  Today, however, I have different (fun!) story for you.

Many of you are aware of “The Bug Geek” (aka Crystal Ernst, my PhD student).  In addition to being an excellent scientist, Crystal is a terrific photographer. A few weeks ago, she opened up an on-line shop to sell her wares, including a mug with this lovely picture of Eris militaris on it (by the way, Crystal is doing this in part to help fund her trip to “BugShot2012″.

Eris militaris, a jumping spider. Photograph (C) C. Ernst.

This jumping spider is the study species of my PhD student Raphael Royaute.   I bought one of Crystal’s mugs,  and it arrived on Wednesday.

The Bug Geek, with the mug

Confused, yet?  Here’s the recap:  Spiders are great, Crystal photographed Raphael’s study species and put the image on a mug, I bought the mug, it arrived (quite unplanned) the day before David Wise showed up in the laboratory.

So, as you can anticipate, David Wise walked away with “The Mug in Question“.  This was entirely appropriate, and I was thrilled to give it to him.  A small token of thanks to one of my academic mentors.   He was pleased, as were the rest of us.  Now I’ll have to go and buy something else from Crystal’s store! (you should too)

Raphael, Crystal and David Wise, with "The Mug in Question".

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In praise of chalk: the value of teaching without technology

Posted on April 11, 2012 | 19 Comments

It is almost the end of the academic term, and time to reflect on the past year’s teaching.  Before I move into summer research activities, I like to take a little time to consider what changes to make in my teaching approach for the 2012-2013 campaign.  One thing, however, will stay the same:  I will continue to teach with a piece of chalk.  Perhaps this seems obvious to some, but at the University level, I think most Professors have long abandoned the chalkboard. I encourage all instructors to return to the chalk, and here’s why.

The dependable chalk and eraser.

1. Lights on! Using a chalkboard means the lights in a classroom have to be on, which keeps people more alert and engaged.  It is seldom that students fall asleep when the lights are up, but in a traditional lecture format, when the lights dim, the eyelids drop.

2. Take notes:  Students, when following along with an instructor who uses a chalkboard, take notes.  This means they are actively engaged in the content. This also means the cell phones are away.  When I teach with chalk, there is an alertness and level of engagement that I have not witnessed with other lecture formats.

3. Slow down:  related to the previous point, when teaching with chalk, the pace must be slow because it takes time to write on a blackboard, and it takes time for students to draw / write what is being delivered.  In general, I find that instructors (myself included!) try to cover too much content, and this usually ends badly.  Less is more.  Cover less material, but cover it well, and slowly.

4. Write, erase, write, erase:  the chalkboard allows for quick and efficient “changes” to a sentence, graph, or mathematical equation. You can change on the fly, and quickly adjust what you write, and fix mistakes.

 5. No faking it:  It is very, very difficult to give a lecture on a chalkboard if you don’t know the material.  You cannot depend on the powerpoint slide to guide you, instead you actually have to prepare carefully. No excuses.  Technology can be a crutch and allow an instructor to appear as if they know the content.  Go away, gimmicks.  Give me chalk.

6. Humour & Humility:  A Professor with a piece of chalk can have high entertainment value.  In one of my classes this term, I think some of the students may have a bet each class about whether or not I will drop another piece of chalk (and watch it shatter into a dozen pieces).  They think this is funny (and I appreciate that this is something that other people like about teaching with chalk!).  I also make a lot of mistakes. I forget how to do simple math, and I  make spelling mistakes.  They catch me, correct me, and enjoy this kind of interaction.  This humility makes the instructor seem like a real person.  Someone you might be willing to approach, and talk to.

7. Cost: Universities are under pretty immense budgetary constraints these days – I think data projectors are here to stay, but I don’t see much opportunity for investment in smartboards and/or tablets for everyone.  Chalkboards are in place.  Chalk is cheap.

The end of the lecture. Mistakes included.

This all sounds fine, but does it really work?

 Yes.

When talking about teaching metrics, my teaching scores have improved in classes where I use the chalkboard.  Comments from students are overwhelmingly in favour of this teaching approach.  They tell me that it is more engaging, and they appreciate the interactive nature. I personally find it a very rewarding experience and well worth the effort.

Speaking of effort, in the long-term, I think teaching with chalk reduces the amount of time it takes to prepare lectures.  It forces the instructor to drill down to the KEY FACTS and work to know them well without wasting time on Powerpoint slides.

You all know what I mean about Powerpoint: fiddle, fiddle, tweak, change font, re-size, re-align, insert picture, lighten, darken, group, un-group, new format, change the background, alter the bullets, etc etc etc.  Powerpoint is a TIME SUCK.  Stay away.

You might say, here: “come on, Buddle, you are out of touch and getting old” and  “Technology is our friend…. the chalk board – seriously???“  Let me clarify -  If I had the choice between a data projector and a chalkboard, I will pick the latter.  In my teaching environment, these are the only two real options.  If I had a ‘smart board‘  I would probably try it out and perhaps use it.  My children have smartboards in most of their elementary school classrooms and smartboards are impressive.  A smart board allows for a nice interplay between static and dynamic delivery of content.  There are also tablets and apps (e.g., see this post  and this one) that can really act like a smart-board, and although I have not yet used them, I have heard good things.  I would argue, however, that even these tools are not the same as the spontaneity and engagement that is possible with the good old chalkboard.  It’s not surprising that classrooms across the nation still install chalkboards: economical, efficient, engaging.

Caveats:  This approach may not work with all courses, and all types of content.  I use this approach mostly in a medium-sized Population and Community Ecology class, where the content is graphical, mathematical, conceptual and includes relatively few word definitions.  It is multi-layered content that does not depend on or need static visuals.  That being said, I do throw in the odd Powerpoint lecture, to mix things up a bit (this is especially true when images/photographs are important).

What do YOU think?   I’d love to hear your opinions (especially from students).

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