Tuesday, February 26, 2008

This Blog has MOVED

The BioBus blog is now here. Thank you!

Friday, February 15, 2008

Microscopes On-Line

This was a really big week!

First, announcements for the inaugural Open Bus were posted, and a mailing list was established to spread the word. Sign-up to stay in the know.

Second, the new website gets more and more hits everyday - 100 hits on Wednesday. Martin Halla has volunteered to expand and develop the site.

Third, Andy Gerson of Olympus delivered a new microscope and camera!

Fourth, I found out that I can get fresh karp fish scales every Tuesday and Wednesday.

Fifth, I had my first student on the bus today, and together we recorded the first cells to be imaged on the bus!

Sixth through I'm-going-to-stop-counting now: Ublip donated a GPS tracker, Fetch Softworks and Marware donated software, and the BioBus Facebook group is going strong!

Please spread the word about the open bus - especially to K-12 students and teachers! I had a meeting with my friend Laura today and we think we can get enough footage for a short, 5 minute video piece about the bus to use on the website and other promotional material.

Want to know "why karp-fish?" and "whats with their scales?" OHHHHH you're gonna have to work for that one.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Revamped Website

I am very proud of the new website! It is still very light on content, but the basic structure is there and ready to build on. It took me about 12 hours to make, in the process of which I learned some basic java script and flash animation.

Please send me your comments and suggestions - or better yet, please let me know if you might have time to help me with the text or images for different parts of the page. No programming necessary, especially just for helping with text.

In other news - a company called ublip has donated a year of free web-based vehicle tracking. Thanks to my home-town pal Andy Turner for suggesting them! I will be putting a map on the web site that will show the current location of the bus so people can see where I am (as well as where I've been!). In addition, the lovely folks at Marware donated a copy of their great project management software called ProjectX that I hope will help me stay organized with the different parallel tasks, contacts, and volunteers

I had lunch today with a friend of a friend at teacher's college. We had a great chat about the project and she gave me some very good ideas and reinforced some of my ideas. I got very excited about the idea of developing some database software that will allow students to access experiments performed by students at different schools, with the hope that past students might help out current students.

It is amazing how generous people have been so far with their time and their money. But I am still badly in need of people on the ground helping me on the bus - there is SO much to do. Please send me a note if there is anything you think you might be able to help with - even a couple hours a week would be great.

Finally, prompted by Emily's visit later in February, I plan on having the first open-to-public tour of the bus. By this time I should have two working microscopes and some fun cell samples to play with!