Blog's in the news

Thought this was pretty interesting (and of course I wrote it)! The article is also on our homepage (www.ohioseagrant.osu.edu) and appeared in the Toledo Blade last month. Just a little incentive for you bloggers to keep up the good work!

I've also been working on an article that will appear in the next issue of Twine Line, the magazine that we run on research and news around the Great Lakes area. The magazine can also be acessed from our home page. Enjoy!

Stone Laboratory Students Offer Personal Accounts of Coursework Via Blogs

Students and educators interested in Ohio State University's Lake Erie campus at Stone Laboratory can now view first-hand accounts of students' experiences on line. Lauren Makeyenko of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is the first of many Stone Lab students who has been busy blogging this past week.

"Everyone was able to participate in the water sampling this morning. Techniques used were the Rosette Sampler (conductivity, temperature, chlorophyll, and dissolved oxygen), Box Core Sampler, Ponar Grab, and Plankton Net," writes Lauren on the first day of her blog."

Shipboard and Shoreline Science on Lake Erie is Lauren's daily journal of her experiences while taking the course Natural Resources 611: Great Lakes Education Workshop. Throughout her blog, Lauren quotes her classmates, uploads pictures of her activities, and documents her experience aboard the U.S. EPA's R/V Lake Guardian.

"Lauren Makeyenko did a great job of capturing not only what was happening with the science but also with the environments we encountered," says Dr. Rosanne Fortner, director of COSEE Great Lakes. "The storms, the mayflies and the canoes all contributed to that experiential aspect that is the most memorable way to learn. I think you can see from the photos how involved and enthusiastic the participants were."

As part of a new Ohio Sea Grant Communications project, Lauren's blog is just one of many student blogs now available on the web. One student from each of the 30 science courses offered at Stone Laboratory has been selected to write a detailed account of their experiences while at the Lab this summer. Courses with blogs now include Sports Fishing, Geology, and Marine and Aquatic Education.

These blogs will serve as a visual and written record of student experiences to use in the following years for promotion. Future students will be able to click and see what they would be doing in class from another student's perspective. From important items to bring to Lake Erie, to how to catch bigger walleye, anyone can see that these blogs are meant to prepare and intrigue future students.

To see Lauren's blog about her experience with COSEE Great Lakes' Lake Guardian course, visit www.coseegreatlakes.blogspot.com. To read about other students' adventures while at Stone Laboratory, visit the Stone Lab Students blog at www.stonelaboratory.blogspot.com.

Stone Laboratory is Ohio State University's Island Campus on Lake Erieand the research facility for the Ohio Sea Grant College Program. Teachers, high school students, and college students take college credit courses at Stone Lab, the nation's oldest freshwater biological field station, every year. More than 5,500 students grades 4 through adults take aquatic science workshops/fieldtrips at Stone Lab annually.