Instructify

BY REBECCAH HAINES

Part of our job as teachers is to help students think critically about the massive amounts of information that they receive on a daily basis. Also critical is helping students understand diverse perspectives and bias. At Public Library of Science  Blogs, whether you are a science or a language arts teacher, you will find a tool to use to help prepare your students in this way.

PLoS Blogs is a mixture of independent science and medicine bloggers (who could be either journalists passionate about science, or scientists passionate about writing), and the PLoS’s own editorial staff. In this way, many diverse perspectives and writing styles are represented through the various weblogs. Some of the more intriguing blog titles presented in the PLoS Blogosphere are “Gobbeldygook,” written by a medical doctor and cancer researchers, and “Speakeasy Science,” written by a Pulitzer-prize winning science writer and journalism professor.

By exploring the many blogs presented at this website, students and teachers can get different perspectives on a wide range of topics. Since many of these are personal blogs, you can examine author bias with your students. Students can compare the presentation of information in these blogs to scientific articles found on a more traditional news site such as Scientific American, or even with a scholarly journal article. In addition to exposing students to science content, these teaching ideas can also help students analyze and critically respond to the media.

As I said, even if you’re not a science teacher, this website should be useful to you as you encourage the development of critical thinking skills in your students.

PLoS blogs

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