I have always loved September. The shift in the air, the first scent of wood smoke, the misty mornings… In many ways, it has always been my time of new beginnings. The start of a new school year has always had more impact on me than a party in the not-quite-solstice of winter. Last September, I received my letter of acceptance into SFU’s teaching program, overcame my struggle with depression, and witnessed my favourite season in…

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Another year, another honey harvest. It is amazing how much I remembered from last time… and how much I forgot. That’s why I made some sketchnotes about the process to better refresh my memory again 12 months from now. Perhaps they will help other wannabe-beekeepers out there! View this post on Instagram I keep forgetting things in the time between honey harvests, so I decided to make some notes. Ink, gold paint, and watercolour pencils (they…

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Another slowmation! This one is on the topic that set me down the road of pursuing a science degree; Mendelian Genetics and the laws of Inheritance. This animation was not a team project, though I did have Max, Monsters and Molecules’ editor-in-chief, narrate it. (Pro-tip: if you know you will be the one editing a video, get someone ELSE to narrate it). I wanted to show that slowmations can be used to tell a story, and I also wanted to experiment with…

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Here is a little slowmation on vaccines that I helped make for my Teaching Science Methodology course. Slowmations are an example of Maker Pedagogy (learning through hacking, adapting, designing, and creating). We made this video with very simple materials, free software (oh, Windows Movie Maker, how I love/hate you!), and in the span of a few...

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“Dresses of the Frizz” Art Prints are available now on Society6, Threadless, and REDBUBBLE (the latter also has has stickers, and other products) Hello! And welcome to Monsters and Molecules! Today’s post is a bit of a break from the regularly scheduled programming, but it is rather like a bridge between my old pursuits and my...

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It has been over a month since I started the teaching program at SFU. What a whirlwind! I have learned a lot and am feeling very hopeful about the changes coming to the BC curriculum; the idea of focusing on learning, as a opposed to a grade, is something I hold dearly. I am in the Secondary...

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I have returned to Vancouver, to settle in and enjoy my new “Big Book of Mandalas Colouring Book” before starting PDP next month. The weather is wet and drizzly, with not a snow patch to be found. And of course my social media feeds are filling up with photos of picturesque snowy landscapes. Snow is a...

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We’re taking a break from Biology today for a brief History lesson! Last year I was commissioned to design the logo for the Society for Invertebrate Pathology’s 2015 conference. Since they meet in a different city each year, they wanted the logo to showcase this year’s location: Vancouver If you have ever visited the City of Glass, it’s...

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Monsters and Molecules is part of digital science salon called Science Borealis (perhaps you’ve noticed the button on the bottom of the page), and we are currently conducting a survey on blog readers in collaboration with Dr. Paige Jarreau, from Louisiana State University. Together we are trying to find out who reads science blogs in Canada, where...

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I crawled out of my den of crafts to make this little comic on an interesting behavior observed in honey bees without a home.

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