Our First Blog Entry

It seems appropriate to begin this blog while at the Ecological Society of America meeting, where I first started selling EcoBeaker exactly 10 conferences ago. I've been to nearly every conference since, sitting at the booth to show EcoBeaker, then EvoBeaker, OsmoBeaker, NerveWorks, and prototype ideas for teaching biology that never made it or are still in the works. It's always fun having people coming by who are using our labs and hearing all the creative teaching that's going on, both with our software and just in general. I'm starting a blog because with the position I'm in now, talking with lots of biology professors about teaching, doing educational research,reading the biology education literature, and developing new tools to help students learn biology, I feel like I'm in a bit of a nexus of ideas for how to teach biology better. I want a venue to share that with others beyond random conversations and a blog seems about right for that. I'm also hoping it will crystallize some directions for new research and development. And by writing down the ideas, thoughts and research I encounter, I hope those of you using our labs may find some interesting tidbits for your own teaching. Also, more selfishly, I'm betting that doing a blog forces me to do just that little bit of extra reading of the literature, which seems to pile up on my desk depressingly fast. Others from SimBiotic will be posting here as well, and I'm sure in addition to reporting on what we hear, read, and learn from our research, we'll also be tempted once in a while into a bit of bragging about cool new software we develop. I hope comments from us in the company and from the rest of you interested in biology education will get a lively discussion going now and again. I'm looking forward to the first SimBiotic blog. Hope you enjoy. Eli Meir