Evernote Organization

March 18, 2018June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

A while back, I wrote about my ongoing process to organize ALL THE THINGS in Evernote (Tag Wrangling in Evernote, Archiving RSS Feeds with Evernote, Storage Space in Evernote, and Evernote). After doing the big tag reorganization last summer, I feel like I’ve come to a pretty comfortable place, so it seems like a good time to update about the structure of my current system.

The nutshell version: moving to a small number of notebooks, and relying on tags and Evernote’s “Search” function is working out really well!

Now, let’s walk through my system in more detail, and how it’s evolved since last summer.

Field Biology trip to Fairfield Osborn

March 15, 2018July 1, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

March 15, 2018

The day of our Field Biology trip to the Osborn Preserve was rainy and a bit cold (but at least it didn’t snow on us, as it had when we were at Sonoma Mountain Ranch).

The day of our Field Biology trip to the Osborn Preserve was rainy and a bit cold (but at least it didn’t snow on us, as it had when we were at Sonoma Mountain Ranch). We were undaunted by the weather, though, as I had a cohort of extremely motivated (and knowledgeable) students, including some folks who had gone through the university’s Naturalist Training Program. We were ostensibly here to survey the coverboards on the property (which we did), but we spent a lot of time making more general observations. We were only there for a few hours, and it drizzled on us most of the time, but we saw loads of great stuff, across a wide variety of taxonomic groups.

Newt Research at Sonoma Mountain Ranch

February 22, 2018June 27, 2024 - Wendy St. John Leave a comment

For our first off-campus field trip of the semester, today I took my Field Biology class up Sonoma Mountain, to the Sonoma Mountain Ranch . . . a working cattle ranch about 30 minutes’ drive from campus. A wide variety of research is being conducted at the site, about the interaction between cattle and ecosystems, and also on the wildlife that uses the preserve. Today, our visit was hosted by Daniel Hudson, an SSU graduate student who is doing research on the various species of Pacific newts.

Field Biology – Learning to Identify Birds

January 29, 2018June 27, 2024 - Wendy 1 Comment

Took my Field Biology students out for the first time on Thursday, for a field experience on campus. I’m planning to spend the first part of the semester introducing them to different taxonomic groups, and helping them develop naturalist skills – especially observation, identification, and keeping details notes in the field – and this seemed like a good way to start.

Arrangement Games

January 22, 2018June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

Oh my . . . it’s been a while since I posted anything. I had such good intentions last semester, but never found the time to sit down and write. Over the next little while, I’m going to go back and post about cool things that happened last year, but for now, I thought I’d jump back in by moving forward with some content that is timely for the beginning of a new semester: arrangement games. This isn’t anything particularly new or groundbreaking – people have been doing these things for years – but I thought I’d do a quick round up of some of the ones that I find work particularly well.

The Wildlands Will Recover

December 21, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

Near the start of Winter Break, I was able to tag along on a walk-through of Crane Creek Regional Park, hosted by Hattie Brown of the Sonoma County Regional Parks, and John Parodi, with Point Blue Conservation Science. The primary reason for the trip was to discuss opportunities for students to get involved in fire recovery research, as parts of the park burned in the Nuns Fire last October. We did come up with some great ideas for student research, which I’ll talk more about during the Spring semester, when the research will be happening. For now, I thought I’d share some of my photos from that day.

The thing that struck me most is how undamaged most of the park appears. Already, the landscape is green, and there are very few obvious signs of the fire. As Hattie said while we were walking, “the wildlands will recover.”

Planting Graminoids!

December 9, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

Yesterday and today, we achieved a big milestone in the Copeland Creek riparian restoration project: putting in some native plants! For this first phase of planting, we started out with grasses, rushes, and sedges (collectively known as “graminoids”), all of them planted near the spot we call Snowberry Corner.

The plants were cultivated here on campus, by the Native Plant Propagation class – they provided us with more plants than we were able to get into the ground! Here they are in the greenhouse, the day before our first planting day:

Maker Space: 3D Printing

November 21, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

Last October, a really spectacular space opened up on campus – we now have a dedicated Maker Space! Loads of equipment, including: vinyl cutter, embroidery machines, sublimation printer, oscilloscope, Arduino, soldering station, engraving machines, laser cutters, Carvey mill, and a virtual reality set up. Oh, and of course, we have 3D printers.

Summer School – Day 14 and 15 – Ecosystem Services and Food Security

July 20, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

The penultimate day of the summer term! Compared to some of our other days, this one was pretty low key, but we did have a little unexpected adventure.

I’d intended to lecture on ecosystem services in the morning, and then watch one of my favorite “teaching” films, “Hurricane on the Bayou.” And this is mostly what happened, except for a little detour part way through. When I arrived on campus, I noticed some flyers posted in the science building – one of the biology grad students, Vanessa Dodge, was giving her thesis defense. Not only was I really interested in her research, as I’d been up to the field site in Point Reyes a couple of times, but I also thought this would be a good way for my students to learn a bit more about the process of science. So, I gave them the choice – do you want to listen to me lecture all morning? Or do you want to go hear someone else talk for a while? They voted in favor of variety, so about an hour into the day we headed upstairs to the thesis defense.

Summer School – Day 13 – Climate Change, Biomes and Food Webs

July 19, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

We covered a lot of ground today. We started out with a lab activity, since we hadn’t had time to explore biomes fully the previous day. I started them out with a super cool Google Earth file that I found here. One of the resources is an interactive Google Earth map with layers that show various aspects of climate – average winter temperatures, average summer temperatures, that sort of thing – along with a layer that shows the location and distribution of biomes, worldwide.

Teacup Rex

Making the World a Better Place With Science

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