Ticking us over from July into August was Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh (@RissaChem), chemistry instructor at Central New Mexico Community College. Because she is an absolute superstar, Rissa storified her week on RealScientists for your enjoyment and convenience. Go check it out here!
Clara is using social media in her teaching..
I use several #socialmedia tools to teach #chemistry, including @instagram (handle: rissachem) & @YouTube (channel: https://t.co/l1SWpSkJMv
— realscientists (@realscientists) August 2, 2016
…and generating lots of great stats about its use in the chemistry classroom
A pic of #R multivariate analysis organized by the social media categorical variable (H=high usage, M=medium, L=low) pic.twitter.com/tsBHI03sB8
— realscientists (@realscientists) August 1, 2016
Touched on one of the hottest topics in the online chemistry community…
Right now? (It changes) How chemists define the word "chemicals". In chemistry, everything w/ a chem formula is 1. https://t.co/upooOPmUGM
— realscientists (@realscientists) August 2, 2016
… and had a big discussion about funding, reviews, and merit
For @NSF budget, plans, dissemination, etc. the important thing is 2 substantiate why u r doing what u’re doing & why u need the $$$ 2 do it
— realscientists (@realscientists) August 4, 2016
Clara graciously accepted our invitation to complete the curator exit survey, and her responses are below.
In general terms, how did you find your week as a curator?
It was a great experience and I definitely enjoyed myself. I even learned a few things about Twitter that I hadn’t known before.
It can be a shock talking to so many. Did you find the sudden rush of interactions (good and bad) daunting?
No, it was actually exhilarating. And exhausting.
What were the highlights? Were there any lowlights?
The highlights included engaging the science community in many issues, ranging from OpenReview to LGTBQ+ issues.
The major lowlight was being attacked pretty quickly and viciously by a follower about one of the memes I uploaded. However, y’all (the RS moderators) were totally on it and I truly appreciated the support.
Is there anything you wanted to get out of / do on the RS account that you didn’t manage to fit in?
Oh so much to do, oh so little time…
I could’ve continued the conversation for much longer than I did, but one week was probably good enough.
In terms of things I wish I had written down – the follower totals immediately before and after I curated the account would have been helpful.
Did you have a plan? If so, did you stick to it?
I had a rather loose plan to discuss a different major topic each day, but the topics changed from my original plan. The changes were due to my BCCE attendance more than anything else as particularly interesting ideas were being discussed that I felt affected the science community more than my original topics.
Do you have any tips or advice for future RS curators?
Be yourself. Don’t overstate your abilities. And if you post pictures, make sure they are properly attributed.
What other people or accounts should people follow if they enjoyed your tweets this week?
I gave a rather in depth list on the account when I was curating the account:
For the chem & sci community, I follow @iamscicomm, @compoundchem, @Chemjobber, @WIRED, @NASA, @aaas, @sciam, @RealTimeChem, & @ACSReactionsFor personal fun & prof dev, I follow @AcademicBatgirl, @PHDcomics, @ResearchMark, @AcademicsSay, @raulpacheco, @Symbiartic, @SnarkyMinion
& for growth as a teacher, I follow @LTHEchat, @HEA_chat, @ScienceNetLinks, @ChemHeritage, @WeAreTeachers, @youinthelab, @GdnHigherEd, etc.
Thanks once again Clarissa from all of us here at RealScientists HQ. If you missed anything from her week, the tweets are all collated at the following link.
