I’m teaching a course in developmental biology this term, and as part of the coursework, I’m making students blog. The idea is to force them to ferret out instances of development in popular culture, in their personal experience, and/or in their reading—I’m not asking for treatises, but simply short articles that let me know their eyes are open. This year I’m also encouraging outsiders to take a look at and comment on what they’re saying, so every week I’ll be posting a round-up of links to the developmental biology blog…and here they are:
- a human-specific gene
- first neurons
- Hox regulation
- Gurdon’s “how does an egg make an organism?”
- manatee bones
- stem cells
- obesity
- problems in breeding pandas
- flower development
- cardiac development
Feel free to comment on any of them if the mood strikes you, but I am going to be particularly protective of my students, so I insist on only constructive comments. I will ruthlessly delete anything abusive or irrelevant or otherwise distracting.
One other thing we’re doing in the class is working through Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and before each discussion I ask the students to write up short summaries of the reading. Tomorrow, we’re going over chapter 1 and 2, and there are six different summaries up on the site right now:
A,
B,
C,
D,
E, and
F (no, those are most definitely not the grades!). I’ll usually have these things linked up a little earlier before the class, but I gave the students extra slack this time since it was a holiday week. Comments and questions there are also appreciated—if there’s something you think the students ought to bring up in the discussion, let ’em know!