A distasteful & disgraceful "Are there limits to evolution?" meeting at the University of Cambridge #YAMMM

Well, I saw this Tweet the other day

Another for @phylogenomics's list of YAMMMs (Yet Another Mostly Male Mtg). Ratio = 1F speaker to 23M speakers. http://t.co/qgEfwtBS2B
— Hopi Hoekstra (@hopihoekstra) September 16, 2014

And though there was a bit of a discussion on Twitter I felt I had to follow up with a blog post. When I saw the post I was at a conference (Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes) where I could get Twitter access but for some reason very little web access. So I could not dig around until now (I am home). 

This meeting is a complete disgrace and an embarassment for the field of evolutionary biology, for the University of Cambridge which is hosting the meeting, and for the Templeton Foundation which is sponsoring it.

Why do I say this? Well, pretty simple actually. The meeting site lists the Invited Keynote speakers for the meeting.  Notice anything?  How about I help you by bringing all the pictures together.

Notice anything now?  How about I help you some more by masking out the men and not the women.

Impressive no?  25 speakers - 23 of them male.  I guess that means there are no qualified female speakers who coudl discuss something about evolution right?  It would be worth reading "Fewer invited talks bu women in evolutionary biology symposia" to get some context.  What an incredible, disgusting, distasteful and disgraceful meeting.  

I recommend to everyone who was considering going to this meeting - skip it.  Also consider writing to the University of Cambirdge and the Templeton Foundation to express your thoughts about the meeting.  This certainly is a fine example of Yet Another Mostly Male Meeting (YAMMM).  Well, maybe I should word that differently - this is a disgusting example of a YAMMM.  

---

For more on this and related issues

Posts on Women in STEM

Also see

See meeting w/ severely bad speaker gender ratio but don't feel comfortable posting?send me details & I will post phylogenomics@me.com
— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) September 19, 2014

Get Away to The Prairie

A few weeks ago Matthew and I got the incredible news that he had been offered a great job as an attorney here in Austin, and those of you following for a while now may appreciate the long and winding road that took us here… it feels SO good to finally reach this elusive "place" we've been waiting to be. PHEW. Maybe now life will take on some semblance of normal.

Before he officially started the job, we took off on a little getaway to Round Top and The Prairie by Rachel Ashwell, which is a piece of heaven on Earth, if you ask me. It was really generous of Matthew to take me here, seeing as how it's not exactly the most masculine place ever. ;) I just have to share a few photos of this gorgeous spot… if you ever have the opportunity to stay here, DO IT! So dreamy. I can't wait to go again.

 

 

 

 

 follow: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Bloglovin | Pinterest | Photography

Everything You Wanted to Know about the Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes meeting #LAMG14

The Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes meeting, which happens every other year, is starting tonight.  I love this meeting.  No bias here since I am now a co-organizer.  But I really love this meeting.  I am posting here some background information about the meeting for those interested.  We will be live tweeting the meeting using the hashtag #LAMG14.  This years program is here.

Posts of mine about previous meetings

• March 02, 2014: Save the dates / preliminary program for Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes Meeting
• July 11, 2012: Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes 2012 #Genomes #Microbes #Mountains #Lake #Fun #Wine #MustGo
• September 22, 2012: Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes Meeting 2012 Speaker Gender Ratio #LAMG12
• September 22, 2012: Storify for Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes #LAMG12 Meeting
• October 28, 2010: The Story behind the Meeting: Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes 2010 
• September 14, 2008: It's Miller Time - Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes Conference -- about to begin
• September 16, 2008: Lake arrowhead notes - UPDATED
• September 29, 2006: Genomics Education highlighted at 14th Annual International Meeting on Microbial Genomics

Blog posts by others

• December 23, 2012: Srijak Bhatnagar: Lessons from 2012: Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes
• September 21, 2008: Morgan Langille Review of Arrowhead Conference

Programs and notes from past meetings

• 1998_LakeArrowhead notes
• 1998_Arrowhead
• 2000_Arrowhead
• 2002 Lake_Arrowhead
• 2004  meeting notes and booklet
• 2006_Arrowhead
• 2008_Arrowhead
• 2010_Arrowhead
• 2012 Lake Arrowhead Booklet

Meeting Web Sites

• Microbial Genomics - ARROWHEAD 2012

I have uploaded slides from my previous presentations at the meeting

---

Jonathan Eisen @phylogenomics talk for #LAMG12 from Jonathan Eisen

---

Jonathan Eisen talk on "The Importance of History" at Lake Arrowhead Small Genomes Meeting 2010 from Jonathan Eisen

---

Jonathan Eisen talk on "Genomic Encyclopedia" at Lake Arrowhead Small Genomes Meeting 2008 from Jonathan Eisen

---

Jonathan Eisen talk on "Enodsymbiont Genomics" at Lake Arrowhead Small Genomes Meeting 2006 from Jonathan Eisen

---

Jonathan Eisen talk on "Phylogenomics of Microbes" at Lake Arrowhead Small Genomes Meeting 2004 from Jonathan Eisen

---

Jonathan Eisen talk on "Phylogenomics of Microbes" at Lake Arrowhead Small Genomes Meeting 2002 from Jonathan Eisen

---

Jonathan Eisen talk on "Phylogenomics of DNA repair" at Lake Arrowhead Small Genomes Meeting 2000 from Jonathan Eisen

Fun read of the day: On whimsy, jokes, and beauty: can scientific writing be enjoyed?

This is such a fun paper: On whimsy, jokes, and beauty: can scientific writing be enjoyed? by Stephen Heard in Ideas in Ecology and Evolution 7: 64–72, 2014  I found out about it in an email from Heard, who sent it to me because he had earlier commented on a blog post I had written: The best writing in science papers part 1: Vladimir Nabokov in Notes on Neotropical Plebejinae (Lycaenidae, Lepidoptera).

Anyway - enough about me - what about this paper?  It has so many nuggets of interest I am not sure which to highlight so I will just go through some of it.  Oh - and it is published with a Creative Commons Attribution license (yay).

Abstract: While scientists are often exhorted to write better, it isn’t entirely obvious what “better” means. It’s uncontroversial that good scientific writing is clear, with the reader’s understanding as effortless as possible. Unsettled, and largely undiscussed, is the question of whether our goal of clarity precludes us from making our writing enjoyable by incorporating touches of whimsy, humanity, humour, and beauty. I offer examples of scientific writing that offers pleasure, drawing from ecology and evolution and from other natural sciences, and I argue that enjoyable writing can help recruit readers to a paper and retain them as they read. I document resistance to this idea in the scientific community, and consider the objections (well grounded and not) that may lie behind this resistance. I close by recommending that we include touches of whimsy and beauty in our own writing, and also that we work to encourage such touches in the writing of others.

OK - the title would have drawn me in anyway but the abstract definitely had me.

If scientific writers aren’t sure how to write better, it isn’t for lack of advice. Dozens of guidebooks discuss form, style, and goals in scientific writing (e.g., Montgomery 2003, Davis 2005, Day and Gastel 2006, Katz 2006, Matthews and Matthews 2007, Rogers 2007, Harmon and Gross 2010, Hofmann 2010, Pechenik 2010, Greene 2013, Heard unpubl.).

OK - I am going to have to look at some of these.

Heard documents a bit of a spat between Sprat and Boyle from the 1660s regarding scientific writing.  I especially like the Boyle quote:

To affect needless rhetorical ornaments in setting down an experiment...were little less improper than...to paint the eyeglasses of a telescope...in which even the most delightful colours cannot so much please the eye as they would hinder the sight...And yet I approve not that dull and insipid way of writing, which is practiced by many...for though a philosopher need not be solicitous that his style should delight his reader with his floridness, yet I think he may very well be allowed to take a care that it disgust not his reader by its flatness...Though it were foolish to colour...the glasses of telescopes, yet to gild...the tubes of them may render them most acceptable to the users (Boyle 1661:11-12, spelling and punctuation modern- ized).

Heard then goes through some different aspects of good scientific writing

• Sightings (1): Playfulness in the scientific literature
• Sightings (2): Beauty

Also - he then doscusses pushback against the "notion that whimsy, jokes, and beauty can have a place in our scientific literature." which I have also seen in many contexts.

He ends with suggestions and I quote the whole section with some highlights:

If you write papers that are crystal clear and thus effortless to read, you’ll have achieved the primary goal of scientific writing and your work will be among the best of our literature. But if you want to reach for even more, if you agree with me that we can also offer our readers some pleasure in reading, what can you do? To begin, you can try to write with small touches of whimsy, humanity, humour, and beauty—without, of course, compromising clarity; and even knowing that sometimes, reviewers will make you take them out. I am not suggesting writing in which art shares the stage equally with content (as can be true in the lay literature). Rather, the goal that’s within our reach is clear, functional writing punctuated with occasional nuggets of playfulness or glints of beauty—to extend Boyle’s metaphor, not a telescope of solid gold but one lightly gilded. 

You can also work to encourage pleasure in what your colleagues write, in two complementary ways. First, when you review manuscripts, you can suppress the reflex telling you to question any touches of whimsy, humour, or beauty that you find; you can even (gently) suggest some be put in. Second, you can announce your admiration of writing that has given you pleasure. Announce your admiration to the writers who crafted the passage, to editors who might be considering its fate, and to students or colleagues who might read it. If we choose to, we can change our culture to deliver, and value, pleasure along with function in our writing.

This is a must read paper.  And I really wish more people would endorse the idea that scientific writing can include more than just science.  Of course, there are many who already endorse this notion but for those who do not - give it a try.

Kudos to Tedmed for the gender ratio of speakers for this year's event

Well done Tedmed.

Here are the speaker pages below.  Notice anything?

The gender ratio of speakers is actually well balanced.  Well done Tedmed.  Well done.

The Hundred Event

Welp, I like to arrive fashionably late to most parties (don't want to seem over-eager, you know), but my timing here is bordering on ridiculous, so.... I figured I better talk about the Hundred Event before it's a good HUNDRED days later!

Photo above by Awake Photography

Two weeks ago, my friend Brittany (of Birch & Brass Vintage Rentals here in Austin) and I packed our little bags and headed up to the Dallas Warwick Melrose for a weekend at The Hundred Event. She supplied the vintage china, glassware, and manned the floral arrangements all for the Sunday Brunch, and I offered up my humble knowledge of photography for two 101 classes on Saturday, as well as helped photograph the Sunday Brunch and headshots alongside Shalyn.

The weekend was a whirlwind and I hardly know how to tackle my thoughts on it all. I am introverted and extroverted in equal measure, in that I love being around people while in the moment, but I find it all very draining and need plenty of alone time to recharge afterwards.  The weekend consisted of meeting some of my long-time favorite bloggers and friends (looking at you, Bridget, Megan, and Dayna!), meeting lots of fabulous new-to-me faces,  public speaking and the natural anxiety that begets, and plenty of general socialization and high-strungness that are always a bi-product of these types of conferences. Like last year at Texas Style Council, I found myself outrageously bad-tempered for a good three days after I got home - the low that often comes immediately after the high.

But one thing I can certainly say I took away from this weekend (besides a super shitty mood) was a reminder of why I'm still so fond of this platform we call Blogging, and how GOOD it has been to me in my life. While I've become all-consumed by my photography business lately, my first love is still writing and social media, and the Hundred Event weekend was a needed reminder of that.

At this point, rather than re-cap everything in great detail, I think I'll just leave a few photos from the weekend and link you all to some of the truly incredible brands that sponsored the event. Seriously, I'm so impressed by these guys! And to Grace, Lauren, Megan, and Bridget - thanks for putting together such a fun weekend for all of us to enjoy. You did a fabulous job, especially considering that this was your first time putting on a conference, and I know all of us are hoping it will be a yearly thing! :)

^^Brunch at the beautiful Aldredge House^^

 

^^cakes by Cake Walk^^

 

 

 

^^Vintage Rentals by Birch & Brass^^

photo above by Shalyn

Brands to browse: Joules // Minnetonka // Love Ophelia (softest and best robes ever!!) // Twine Interiors // Lily Jade // Bungalow Magazine // Peacock Alley // 

and awesome donations from:

Lily Jade // Minted // Meg-Made // Fancy Face // Laura Ashley // The Giving Keys // White Plum // Design Darling // Sonnet James // Shop Strands // Pame Designs // Susan Posnick // Artifact Uprising  // Lulu & Georgia  // West Elm // Blowfish Shoes // Minnetonka  // Tech Armor // Maison Miru  // GiGi NY // Heidi Klein  // Boden // Modern Celebrations  // Knotty Tots // Jennifer Anne Styles // Whole Parenting // Little Dovie

follow: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Bloglovin | Pinterest | Photography

Why do so many Moodle courses suck?

Moodle is a magnificent free product and has the potential to enable schools and teachers to build wonderfully unique interactive online learning courses in which learner interaction can be tracked, measured and responded to. Despite this the vast majority of Moodle courses I see are a long list of Word and PDF documents with at best a few forums that enable a minimum of human social interaction.

Given the state of many of these courses, it’s no wonder that drop out rates for online learning are so high. And of course Moodle isn’t the only culprit. Many of the other commercially available LMS (learning management systems) and VLE (virtual learning environment) platforms aren’t doing any better.

Moodle has been around now since 2002 and research carried out in 2013 showed that more than 7.3 million students had studied in more than 83 thousand registered sites.

Image from ELTPics: https://flic.kr/p/jBXAwK

So why is it that so little progress has been made in developing innovative courses that really generate interaction with media rich content?

The problem surely isn’t Moodle, because the platform is capable of delivering all of the above.

The reality is that there are a number of causes:

• I think it’s fair to say that Moodle isn’t the most intuitive of platforms to work with. A lot of progress and improvements have been made, but it’s inevitable that a product with multiple modules constructed by different people is likely to result in some inconsistencies of look and feel.
• The fact that Moodle is seen as a ‘free’ platform and so a ‘cheap’ way to get learning online is another factor. Schools start using the platform with the impression that it won’t require much financial backing and that once they have provided the platform teachers will just be able to get their classes online.
• This brings me to the next point and that is lack of training. Most teachers I have met who use Moodle do so with only the most minimal and basic training and again this comes back to the perception that Moodle is a cheap solution. Many school managers seem to think that a few hours of training is enough to get their teachers designing great online courses. It’s not! Training to use Moodle effectively takes considerable time and needs to be constantly reinforced and renewed.
• A second element of training which is often overlooked is instructional design. A teacher may well be marvellous at developing and delivering their own materials in the classroom, but when it comes to converting those materials into effective online learning units there is a new level of skill and understanding that they need. Understanding the instructional design potential of an online platform and how to structure materials so that students progress through an online environment requires training and experience.
• Another factor in this mix is that the Moodle platform is often seen as the ‘property’ and responsibility of the IT department and as such they make the platform as secure as possible. Often this means that teachers’ access to many of the different features and potential that Moodle can deliver are hidden from the teacher and they don’t have the opportunity to experiment with the platform and learn for themselves.

So given all of these problems is it worth using Moodle or any other platform to develop online and blended learning for your students? 

The answer is of course a resounding yes. To ignore the potential that online learning and new technology has to offer is to be like King Canute trying to order back the sea.

But to use technology effectively education establishments have to approach online learning with their eyes open.

• It isn’t a cheap solution.
• It will require a significant investment in training for teachers
• Teachers won’t just construct wonderful online courses in their free time. Developing good online materials takes time. More time than it takes to develop paper-based face to face materials, so they will need to be paid for this time.
• Teachers need to be trained at all levels of the platform including the admin level, not just at teacher level.

How about ready made courses?

Knowing all of this schools may be tempted to by an ‘off the shelf’ solution with all the content ready made, but I would be wary of this type of ‘one size fits all’ content. In many cases the content has just been adapted from a course book with a copious amounts of drag and drop and gap-filling activity mixed with a little multimedia and very little student - teacher or peer to peer interaction built in and no sign of any authentic materials or personalisation. These courses are often dull beyond belief and fail to engage the students.

The best online courses, just like the best face-to-face courses, are usually designed by teachers who have developed an understanding of the needs and interests of their students and can choose content which they will enjoy and find engaging.

So, if platforms like Moodle are really to be used to develop effective and engaging learning which realises the potential of online and blended learning modes of delivery, then we must have managers who are willing to invest in developing the skills of their teachers and teachers who are willing to meet the challenges of new technology head on  and accept their changing and more diverse roles as teachers, mentors and instructional designers.

For teachers who would like to try to develop their own Moodle skills.
You can register for a free Moodle platform at: http://www.mdl2.com/ It takes a few moments to register and then you have your own Moodle platform to use as a sandpit.

Here are a few quick video tutorials that can help get you started.

• How to add an image to Moodle and size it correctly
  This video shows how to edit the html code to control the space the image takes on the screen.
• Formatting a Moodle page
  This video shows how to make the Moodle page look more attractive and professional
• Adding an image to a Moodle webpage
  This video shows how to add an image to a Moodle page
• Adding a YouTube video to Moodle
  This video shows you how to embed a video from YouTube into a Moodle page
• Embedding a webpage into a Moodle page
  This video shows you how to embed a webpage from a different site into a Moodle page so that it appears as part of the Moodle course
• Creating a questionnaire
  This video shows you how to create the questionnaire framework. 
• Adding questions to a questionnaire
  This video shows how to add questions to the questionnaire once the framework has been created. 
• How to create a quiz
  This shows how to create the quiz framework before adding questions 
• How to add questions to a quiz
  This shows how to add questions to your quiz once you have created it.

I hope you find these videos useful and enjoy making a start at using Moodle to create more engaging materials.

Best

Nik Peachey