In my FYE (First Year Experience course) a man named Dennis McEnnerney played professor. He did outstandingly. During some of our discussions he would claim that the small liberal arts college scene was a matchmaking business in disguise. He would claim that going to one of these colleges was a way for young, fertile, intelligent, upper-class lads and lassies to meet each other and fall in love and create more fertile, intelligent, upper-class lads and lassies.
It’s an interesting theory. It seems somewhat true, though maybe applicable to all relationships, not just romantic ones. Other applicable relationships include friendships and professionalships (cross those fingers for that last one being true).
I think that Boston is the city version of Dennis’s theory. Greater Boston has over 20 colleges, including Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, Tufts, BU, BC, Northeastern… the list goes on. Then people graduate and stay to take on biotech jobs and launch start-ups. Boston is brimming with young, intelligent, upper-class lads and lassies. As for fertility, Here is how fertile Massachusetts is (in a lot of words). Public Announcement: no one told me to censor myself in this “blogging about your time at EyeWire” thing, and so I’m interpreting it loosely.
Here’s another photo of me at a desk.
![Back row: super cool eyewire neuron poster F]Front row from left to right: the edge on a monitor, a stuffed neuron, a mini glass neuron sculpture thingy majig, me.](http://sites.coloradocollege.edu/n_friedman/files/2015/02/IMG_0230-e1425100309262.jpg)
Front row from left to right: the edge on a monitor, a stuffed neuron, a mini glass neuron sculpture thingy majig, me.
I made a lesson plan for secondary school teachers who want to use EyeWire to teach neuroscience in the classroom. It’s estimated to take 3 hours. An average class at CC is 3 hours. Coincidence? Yeah… but like even so maybe CC should teach my lesson…
I doubt the audience for the block features blog is thick with secondary school biology, psychology, and technology teachers but here’s my lesson plan and definitely holla at me in the “comment” section if you do fit that description.
Other things I’ve been up to at EyeWire: Emailing, odds-and-ends, using words such as “collaboration” and “gamification”.
I had a thought way back in the day when I found out that I would be working on education outreach with EyeWire. Here is the thought: I am taking a field of research (connectomics) that is controversial and still in its exploratory stage, and I am promoting it to be taught to children and teens in school. What separates me from someone who promotes creationism in schools? I know, I know, I know… it’s a huge stretch to compare these two things but I think it was valid to question my job, if only for a moment. I found that the biggest thing that makes my curriculum different is that I end my lesson asking teachers to promote critical thinking, and to hope for students to have questions that cannot yet be answered. I’d like to help motivate students to have their own thirst for knowledge. Enough thirst that they pursue knowledge independently. I wonder if anyone will use my lesson plan. Probably, I guess. I’m glad I’ll be miles away from whoever does, because just the idea of it makes me nervous. And feeling this way makes me feel young.
