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17 March 2023
Harnessing the power of TikTok for science communication
TikTok catapulted in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic and has now come to dominate the social media landscape. With over 1 billion monthly active users, science communicators have the potential to capitalize on TikTok’s success and share their science with a broad, engaged audience.
10 October 2022
Youth astrobiology education continues at Blue Marble Space Institute of Science
On July 16, 2003, the famed former President of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nelson Mandela stood in front of a crowd in the midst of the founding of the Mindset Network and said “education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world”.
24 June 2022
#AntarcticLog: Picturing time
How do you picture time? Does that seem like a strange notion? Not to a visual storyteller like me. Is time a wheel? a sphere? a line? a line with wrinkles? (Don’t forget, I’m a children’s book author, too.)
21 March 2022
Volunteer-Driven Outreach Highlights Research at Scripps Oceanography
Have you ever been hugged by a sea urchin? Watching a young kid apprehensively place their finger between the spines of a sea urchin, then light up with excitement when the spines gently squeeze them is just one thing that motivates us to dedicate so much time to outreach. While we have the attention of that student, we can explain that photoreceptor (or light-sensing) cells on the tips of the urchin spines allow them to sense shadows and move their spines towards predators as a defense mechanism.
18 March 2022
#AntarcticLog: (Climate) refugees
Sometimes there just aren’t words to express my response to what’s going on. That’s what led me to comics in the first place — a grievous story of walrus stranded by climate change — and it’s what leads me on. What “does not compute” in words can make a connection in visuals.
28 January 2022
#AntarcticLog: How much? How Fast?
How Much? How Fast?
That’s the big question International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration scientists are digging into as they explore above, below, and beyond this immense, powerful, thawing glacier.
24 December 2021
#AntarcticLog: In appreciation of dogs
It can be far easier for furry, four-footed friends to cross treacherous Antarctic ridges and formations than people or vehicles. Time was, back in the age of the heroic explorers, dogs were helpful for transport, warmth, companionship — and sometimes, food.
10 December 2021
#AntarcticLog: Introducing I Was a Kid!
There’s something truly thrilling happening in the sciences — an effort to increase diversity and inclusion among the ranks. Across our research institutions I see a new emphasis on supporting all, and inspiring more to target science for their own careers. Because I write and draw so much for young people, that’s where I’ve put my energy for the last year and a half, and now I’m ready to share it.
23 November 2021
Sharing Science at AGU21
Well, it’s that time of year again. No, not the holidays (well, yes, that too). It’s AGU’s Fall Meeting!
17 November 2021
#DrawnToGeoscience: Storytelling via Zine
I have been interested in science communication, art, and literature since the start of my education in the environmental sciences. There are as many ways of communicating science as there are scientists: graphs, figures, presentations, papers, books, lectures. By channeling information about dissolved organic matter biogeochemistry into a comic book—a recognizable form, with its own connotations—I wanted to spark contemplation of what it means to produce and communicate scientific knowledge.
The Plainspoken Scientist is the science communication blog of AGU’s Sharing Science program. With this blog, we wish to showcase creative and effective science communication via multiple mediums and modes.