Science Communication: A Practical Guide

After completing the readings for this session, please write what you think did and did not work about the communication used.

Identify a science blog of your choice from the Discover Magazine “stable” of blogs available at: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/, follow it for at least three days during the week preceding this class, and write a short critical review of it. What is the blog trying to do, and how well is it doing it? Come to class prepared to give a short (2 minute) review of your chosen blog.

Please tour the public galleries on display in the lobbies of the Broad Institute and the Koch Institute, which face one another across Main Street on the MIT campus. Then write brief notes (2–3 pages) that critically compare and contrast the approaches to exhibiting science of these two galleries.

Revise your one-page written piece to include the elements you recently learned.

Come to class with a first draft of a one-page description of a phenomenon in science for a public audience, a one-page essay on a topic related to science, or a one-page letter to the editor responding to a recent op-ed on a topic in science or technology.

The readings for this session are two different accounts on the discovery of the structure of DNA. When reading them, take into account the discussion we will have comparing and contrasting both what they say and their ways of saying it.