The Class Blog

Blog Lesson Idea
I intend to turn the blog to the class. I get all my writing done on the class management tool, Angel. This is the blog of the class, for the class, by the class.

Students Stories
My students already work in the field of health care. They are in the trenches. They work in pediatric emergency rooms, trauma centers, dental offices, and last but not least the meat department at the local supermarket; they see it all.

I would like them to write down the wealth of information they share briefly in class. Usually we don’t have enough time to hear the full story and many questions are left unanswered. I have learned so much from each class and want new students to benefit from the knowledge of their predecessors. As an example, a student told me about a musician friend of hers. He ended up in the hospital with a mysterious ailment that baffled the medical staff. It was anthrax that he contracted from the animal skins he was priming to build a drum. Many students had malaria. One student battled TB for a year. She is not yet out the proverbial woods.

Power Point Presentations Library
Every quarter students write a research paper on an infectious disease of their choice. The paper must be accompanied by a 5-8 minute oral presentation. The papers are usually a solid piece of work, well researched and well written, except for one or two duds. The power point presentations are wonderful. They really grab your attention. For some students, health care is a second career; they come from graphic arts or marketing, and does it show in their work! I would like these presentations to be available as a reference source for future classes. See an example below.

Read this doc on Scribd: Anthrax presentation

Microbes in the News
Students review online a news article from the general press on microbes and society. I can always count on Salmonella, E. coli, or methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) to rear their ugly little heads somewhere in the country.

Microbe of the Week
Discuss in some details one important pathogen a week focusing on its biology and identification rather than the pathology.

“From my teachers, I learned much. From my peers, I learned more. But it is from my students that I learned the most.” – Babylonian Talmud: Mak. 10a; Tan., Ta'an. 7a

Gram Stain

Hans Christian Gram was a Danish doctor working in Berlin during the Golden Age of Microbiology. The staining procedure named after him, the Gram stain, was published in 1884. It is the most commonly used technique in microbiology. The music is a reminder of the fact that a Gram stain is one part science and two parts art and practice. To this day, we don't understand how it actually works. Notice that the demonstrator is left handed. Most lab instructions are oblivious of that simple fact, and directions are for the right handed only.

I drew a flow chart of the Gram stain in Adobe Illustrator for my students. I recommend laminating your copy.

It's DNA Day!

April 25 has been designated DNA day. The April 25, 1953 issue of Nature marked a milestone in science. Three papers reported on the structure of DNA. The papers are considered classics and everyone cites them without reading them. So be original, download and read them.

The discovery of the structure of the double helix was one of the most exciting development of science in the twentieth century-- I am prejudiced here--and one of the most sordid tales of scientific competition and machiavellian chicanery. A student in my Cell Biology class pointed me to this site for a blow-by-blow account of the race to the double helix.

It has been more than 50 years since the double helix took center stage in biological sciences and DNA still spins its magic.

Visit the site of the NHGRI (National Human Genome Research Institute) for DNA activities. It is all about us, you, me, the lowly fruitfly, and the splendid E. coli.

Happy DNA day!

Don't throw that cheese yet!

In honor of Earth day I will address a stinking problem: when do you throw food away? I have an apocalyptic view of life. Soon we will all starve and you just don't throw food away. My husband is of "the better safe than sorry" persuasion and will toss anything that is remotely suspicious such as good apples with a brown dimple.

So I went to the source, if you will, the Food and Drug Administration, which offers some recommendation on what to keep and what to throw.

I guess I will have to throw those green fuzzy tomatoes now.

Bon appetit!