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18 February 2019
Jewelry…for science!
Now, when science is increasingly under attack, I’ve been focusing my efforts on activism in the best way I know how… through making art.
14 February 2019
Happy Science Valentine’s Day!
In which we offer you a series of valentines to scientific fields of study.
11 February 2019
Telling the Stories of STEM
I took a chance and asked Jane, has your son considered engineering? She gave me a strange look as if I hadn’t heard her say her son wanted a career that helps people, and she quickly changed the subject. As a result, I missed the opportunity to tell Jane about Mike Paddock.
4 February 2019
Conveying Science through Art: An Alternative Way of Communicating about Earth Observation research
In the Americas, We Use Satellites to Sow Dreams in the Soil is a three-part poem that was presented at the 2018 fall session of American Geophysical Union (AGU). The poem was an alternative – perhaps unconventional – way of presenting about three Earth Observation (EO) initiatives that I and colleagues at NASA’s SERVIR Science Coordination Office and the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) are involved with.
28 January 2019
The World We’ll leave Our Grandchildren: Theatre as a means of stimulating the public discussion of climate change
When communicating with an audience it is important to have clear answers to the questions (i) Who are they?, (ii) What do I want them to do?, and (iii) How can they do it? It was with this in mind that in 2014 I embarked on a project to write and perform a play on climate change.
21 January 2019
How to make glaciers fun to learn about
I’ve been studying terrestrial glaciers for a half dozen years now, and Spoiler Alert: they are melting! While seeing the demise of the cryosphere unfold before my eyes, I started to pursue more and more outreach opportunities to help “get the word out” to the public.
14 January 2019
The Science of Our Stories, Part II: Moving the Needle on Effective Science Communication
By Sunshine Menezes Young scientists-in-training face a variety of communication challenges, from writing their first lab report to drafting their first proposal, perhaps culminating in their dissertation. All along this part of the career spectrum, students are taught—too often implicitly—what “good” scientific communication looks like. Unfortunately, most corners of academia still emphasize a narrow definition of science communication that focuses on communication with scientific peers. This leaves early career scientists …
8 January 2019
The Science of Our Stories: How Communication and Training Bridges the Gap Between Scientists and Journalists
All of our lives are made up of stories that help us make sense of the constantly changing world around us. Stories help us understand what is happening, why it’s happening, and the ever-important-question of what can be done about it; They often provide us with the familiar narrative elements – an introduction, plots, main characters, setting, climax, and conclusion – that our brains readily accept as the way the story should go. But when it comes to the story of science, sometimes things get more complex, messy, and completely non-linear.
3 January 2019
AGU18 debrief: Y’all love scicomm…and that makes us happy
Yes, I know. Fall Meeting was last month (and year), so what took us so long? Honestly…we were exhausted, but for the best reasons. Turns out that y’all love scicomm so much and helped to make AGU18 one of most successful for Sharing Science yet!
28 December 2018
Drawn to Geoscience: Really, though…what was the OG paleo diet?
By Shane M Hanlon At our annual meeting early this month, researchers presented new findings that brings insight into the diets of Neanderthals. Here a good summary of the work via Eos. AND, we were fortunate enough to have our old friend JoAnna Wendel draw a comic describing the findings! Check it out below. Shane M Hanlon is a Program Manager in AGU’s Sharing Science Program. Follow him @ecologyofshane. JoAnna Wendel is a freelance science …
The Plainspoken Scientist is the science communication blog of AGU’s Sharing Science program. With this blog, we wish to encourage scientists to reach out to non-scientists and to do so with plainspoken discussion.
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