Well, it has been a while. Almost 4 years! Guess it has been busy. I am back because of the Open Networked Learning course: ONL191.

How do I know about it? When I visited Sweden last year, my friend Gizeh told me about it. Gizeh and I go way way back, to Cuba and our times at the National Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology in the late 90s. Funnily enough, after many years we have arrived to a similar place of interest: online learning, active learning, innovative STEM practices, use of media for teaching, social media. I am curious to explore the European side of the field, and I signed up for the course. First requirement, you need a blog! So I just connected this one to the course, and now am feverishly writing an update.

Last time I blogged (October 2015) I had just lost a sampling system in my ocean plastic set and was slightly deflated. In December I broke my ankle walking on a wide and mellow trail in the Mojave road, which set me back a couple of months, but then got back to action. Plastic research, education research, and some cool service activities.

Highlights of the past years include becoming a member of the ASBMB Public Outreach Committee (recently renamed Science Outreach & Communication) and as such getting more involved in outreach activities; a paper published in CBE Life Science Education about flipping a majors general biology course, and the best of it all, getting a NSF STEM education grant for the plastic project in collaboration with Jeff Bowman from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The grant (from application to the first months in action) has a pretty steep learning curve. But we are finally doing what we wanted originally…have students participate in authentic and fun research as part of their coursework.

And this is it for now. I am really glad that ONL191 has pushed me back to blogging. Onward and onward!