communication

Wikipedia as a training ground in science communication

January 11, 2011

I had this idea a while back — wouldn’t it be cool to use Wikipedia as an outlet for some of my urge to write about particular topics that I was learning about?  For example, I saw that the entry for physics education research is pretty paltry. Well, it looks like the chemists are away [...]

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How to effectively communicate science (blog post from AAAS)

May 4, 2010

Today we’ve got a treat — a very detailed guest post on science communication from my colleague Carolyn Gale.  I found out she was going to the AAAS conference, which had a lot of great sessions this year, and asked her if she’d like to write up some of her experiences.  Following is her wonderfully [...]

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I guess I really rock…

March 17, 2010

A few posts ago I noted that, apparently, I rock, as my picture was featured as part of the Exploratorium’s website for their Rockin’ Science Series. And now, I have confirmation, as I was just interviewed for the findingEducation’s Educators That Rock! series.  They did a very nice interview with me, about my love for [...]

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Plexiglas breaks in weird ways (science writing on the side)

February 12, 2010

In my copious spare time (!), I do some freelance writing assignments.  I recently got a fun assignment from my acquaintance and colleague David Ehrenstein at Physical Review Focus.  (I met David many years ago at a National Association of Science Writers conference… before a talk started, I heard someone ask “Could you explain Dark [...]

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How a scientist becomes a freelance science writer

January 5, 2010

I recently wrote an article for the National Association of Science Writers, on my career path to becoming a freelance science educator and writer.  It’s on the members-only part of the site here, but dear readers, I give it to you here to enjoy!  A big thanks to Cathy Dold for asking me to write [...]

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Science cliche’s to chuck down the black hole

December 10, 2009

The National Association of Science Writers has a nice news feed now (check it out at http://www.nasw.org/, though the RSS feed isn’t obvious — ask me if you want it).  So, here I’m reposted a repost of a Wired article on Five Atrocious Science Cliche’s. Think that it’s time that we found a silver bullet [...]

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Public science lectures: What for? How to?

November 23, 2009

I recently read two interesting articles on translating science for the public — in particular, why we give lectures for the public at all, and some effective ways to do it. For those of you who are interested, here are the original source articles: Explaining the Unexplainable: Translated Scientific Explanations (TSE) in public physics lectures, [...]

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[NASW] Blogging from the science writing conference

October 26, 2008

I have been terribly remiss in my blog posts, and I apologize. These last two weeks it was tough to keep up with my day job, and engage in the “global conversation” through fabulous blog posts. BUT, here I am, and “here” happens to be at the National Association of Science Writer’s conference in Palo [...]

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