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| Click to see tardigrade image full size |
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My response
My chosen article is from the "Science" section of the BBC News website. I don't normally look at that section because the "Technology" and "Health" sections usually have articles that interest me more, but I had seen the title a couple of days earlier, and when I read about medical technology in the next reading in Skillful Reading ("Do We Know Too Much", Bixby & Scanlon, 2013, p. 61), I thought there was an interesting connection, especially with the genetic basis of the research.
I had already heard of the amazing survival abilities of tardigrades from my general reading in biology, so they were not new to me. What fascinated me was how modern technology explores the genes inside animals, plants and other living things to prove that every living thing on Earth is related to every other living thing; in other words, that life appears to have evolved only once on our planet, about 3.5 billion years ago, and that every living that has ever lived since, up to today, is a descendant of that first event. Even when I was reading biology in high school, it amazed me to learn that we humans were related not only to chimpanzees, but to cats, rats, bats, to roses, apples and rice, and even to the bacteria and viruses that try to kill us! But this is what the genetic evidence solidly proves to be fact.
In fact, if I had to think of one scientific advance that has done more to change how we humans think about ourselves and our place in the world, I would give Darwin's theory of evolution, which he published in 1859, even greater importance than Copernicus or Einstein, which were revolutionary, but perhaps not quite so humbling for we human beings as Darwin's solid theory is.
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My question for readers
What do you think? What is one scientific advance that has had a major impact on human life?
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- Bixby, J. & Scanlon, J. (2013). Skillful reading and writing: Student's book 3. Oxford: Macmillan Education
- Gabbott, S. (2017, July 28). Secrets of the world's toughest creatures revealed. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40752669
My summary paragraph here is exactly 135 words. It took me some work to get it down to that limit from the first draft of 148 words.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to check, paste your summary into a Google Doc, and in the "Tools" menu, Google will count the words for you. I do not try to count the words myself: I am sure that Google's technology can do that far more accurately, certainly much faster, than I can.
As you can see from the "quotation marks", I copied and pasted from my source twice in the summary paragraph. Both quotations are short groups of words that Gabbott wrote which "really are worth quoting" (Bixby & Scanlon, 2013 p. 33). I really liked the way that Gabbott stated her ideas there, so I copied those words, but the rest is all my paraphrase of her ideas.
It took me about 40 minutes to write my summary paragraph, including reading the article a couple of times, getting my ideas about important points to include in my summary, and then writing the paragraph. The much longer response section, in contrast, took about ten minutes. Finally, I spent a few minutes thinking of and writing a question for readers that relates to my summary and response.
You probably need to plan an hour or more to write your own first blog post responding to an article from the BBC News.