Comments on: Teaching taxonomy in the age of Wikipedia, part 2 http://robwall.ca/2009/01/30/teaching-taxonomy-in-the-age-of-wikipedia-part-2/ Searching for wisdom by exposing my own ignorance Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:56:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Rob http://robwall.ca/2009/01/30/teaching-taxonomy-in-the-age-of-wikipedia-part-2/#comment-463 Rob Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:06:13 +0000 http://robwall.ca/?p=194#comment-463 <p>Thanks for those suggestions, Jonathan. I will likely integrate some aspect of them as this continues in the second semester and in future years. One of the elements of this project that excites me is that there are so many directions to go from here and possibilities for adding to the knowledge repository that we are building.</p> <p>I was thinking of letting students pick a favourite animal or two, but decided against it so there would be some breadth to the organisms being studied. Maybe next time I'll give them some more discretion for their research organism.</p> Thanks for those suggestions, Jonathan. I will likely integrate some aspect of them as this continues in the second semester and in future years. One of the elements of this project that excites me is that there are so many directions to go from here and possibilities for adding to the knowledge repository that we are building.

I was thinking of letting students pick a favourite animal or two, but decided against it so there would be some breadth to the organisms being studied. Maybe next time I’ll give them some more discretion for their research organism.

]]> By: Jonathan M Pratt http://robwall.ca/2009/01/30/teaching-taxonomy-in-the-age-of-wikipedia-part-2/#comment-464 Jonathan M Pratt Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:26:54 +0000 http://robwall.ca/?p=194#comment-464 <p>Great ideas here, and I appreciate that you've shared your methodology. Just some thoughts on extending the project: what about having the students look at the common characteristics of shared groupings, and to research on the individual manifestations of those characteristics in the compared species? You could also bridge this with evolution by having the students research the timeline of divergence of the groups. Another approach could be to have the students pick two favorite animals (perhaps with the limitation that there can't be repeats) and then to build the relationship of all back to humans. I'm working with my students on building dichotomous keys at the moment, building up to taxonomy - thanks for the inspiration!</p> Great ideas here, and I appreciate that you’ve shared your methodology. Just some thoughts on extending the project: what about having the students look at the common characteristics of shared groupings, and to research on the individual manifestations of those characteristics in the compared species? You could also bridge this with evolution by having the students research the timeline of divergence of the groups. Another approach could be to have the students pick two favorite animals (perhaps with the limitation that there can’t be repeats) and then to build the relationship of all back to humans. I’m working with my students on building dichotomous keys at the moment, building up to taxonomy – thanks for the inspiration!

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