Rat Lady-thoughts

Thoughts on Technorati

2007-07-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

I "played around" with Technorati for about 5 hours reading the commentaries and searching with terms that were meaningful to me and relevant to the courses I teach. I wanted to see what kind of material was available using those terms as tags. I used terms such as rats, albinic rats, pigmented rats, Long-Evans rats, laboratory rats and breeding rats.

I was surprised with the kind of materials accessed in Technorati by using those terms as tags. For example, the term rat elicited a comment referring to someone as a "rat bastard," which was not what I expected. Overall, the material tagged with those terms did not provide the scientific/technical information that I wanted. Then I did a Google search, using the same terms, and compared the results. I found more credible information by using Google than by using Technorati.

I shouldn't have been surprised, given that we are talking about two different types of information resources.

Yesterday in the Lab

2007-06-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

Folks have asked for an update so here are photos to show the difference in appearance between 3 days old and 23 days old for the 2 litters in "An Explosion of Multiple Births."

Online Image Generators (Image Chef)

2007-06-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

Yada yada yada.

O. K. This is not my thing!!!!

Messing with RSS (Bloglines)

2007-06-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

I entered Bloglines and set up an account, which was really easy.

They listed information categories and requested preferences. I chose only from the left column and indicated books and science.

I checked each of the categories that I had chosen and the 1 category that was chosen for me. I then proceeded to edit the ones that I didn't feel were really beneficial, including the one the site chose for me.

Now I have a reasonable 3 categories. However, this may prove to be far too many categories to "keep on top of", so I may be revising in the near future.

Using a Flickr Tool

2007-06-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

I tried all of the Flickr applications that were mentioned. Some were fun and one literally gave me a headache!

I may be missing something but I don't see a direct classroom use to most of the applications I tried--at least using the photos that are already online in Flickr.

The "Warholizer" was fun and I made something that I like, but I still don't know how I'd use it in my classes. However, I could see it being used in Introduction to Psychology in the Perception & Sensation chapters.

Here's what I made, starting with a photo of my Alaskan mask:

Explosion of Multiple Births

2007-06-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

Announcing one set of sextuplets, 2 sets of double sextuplets, and one set of double quintuplets!!!

It's hard being a midwife...even for rats!!

That's why I'm behind with my 23 things, because I've been dealing with 40 things!!

Here's a shot of one pigmented litter and one albinic litter:

Flickr Spelling

2007-06-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

This is my attempt at playing with Flickr spelling.

Today in the lab

2007-05-29T18:16:00.000-07:00

One of my jobs is to supervise the rat lab. That doesn't mean I sit at a desk and write memos to tell people what to do. What it means is that I have to do a lot of things myself. One of the jobs that I do during the summer, due to the quieter environment, is to breed the animals that will be used for the Fall Research Methods class and for the Introduction to Psychology classes (to demonstrate how the animal model is used in research). Psi Betans also use the animals for research.

There is a three-pronged breeding approach to maintain a viable colony. The lines bred include pigmented to pigmented (from the same litter), albinic to albinic (same litter) and pigmented to albinic (same litter). Out of the 12 pairs bred, we definitely have 10 pregnant Moms-to-be.