Matt Wilkins

Hey! Yes I remember chatting briefly. That's cool we have a birdsong connection as well! I hope this is useful to you! It was a very challenging side project that I just wanted to exist. Glad to hear others value it.

Dive into Sound with SoundLab: A Free Tool for Acoustic Exploration — Galactic Polymath Ever wondered what a bird song looks like, or how to visually understand the different frequencies in your favorite music? That's where SoundLab comes in! SoundLab is a free, web-based app designed to...

ICYMI, we (@galacticpolymath.com) created a free web-based sound analysis tool. Great for teaching about birdsong, physics of sound, band, or advanced #bioacoustics! Just a free app with no installation or coding needed thanks to NSF funding! #SaveNSF 🧪
www.galacticpolymath.com/blog/dive-in...

YouTube video by Galactic Polymath Practice observing birds and asking questions with 2 biologists!

Check out these #bird scientists showing how to be observant and ask good questions! 🤩🪶 Featuring Drs. Allison Johnson & Dai Shizuka, and some adorable Australian fairywrens! #NSF -funded research and #BroaderImpacts 🧪
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjve...

If you're teaching any science class (middle school to college) where you want students to learn how to ask better questions, check this out! Free thanks to funding from NSF. #saveNSF #birds #Edusky🧪

Stop Chasing Shiny Tech: Invest in Teachers if You Actually Want to Improve Education — Galactic Polymath We’re not going to fix education with more technology. Let’s reframe what innovation in education actually means. It doesn’t have to mean new tech. Sometimes, it means trusting teachers to lead.

THIS! 🔥👇
"We’re not going to fix education with more technology...
we’re putting too much emphasis on what looks innovative, and not enough on what’s actually effective."
#EduSky #EdTech
Wonderful guest blog by Michelle Blanchet of The Educators' Lab! 👏
www.galacticpolymath.com/blog/stop-ch...

a caterpillar on a leaf

zoomed out view of a caterpillar on a well chewed Partly Everlasting plant

very nice! We have some American painted lady caterpillars we hope are gonna make it to butterfly stage

Dive into Sound with SoundLab: A Free Tool for Acoustic Exploration — Galactic Polymath Ever wondered what a bird song looks like, or how to visually understand the different frequencies in your favorite music? That's where SoundLab comes in! SoundLab is a free, web-based app designed to...

fyi, #SoundLab is available now for free to all! A simple web app for visualizing sounds (spectrogram & waveform) and automatically extracting data. For birdsong enthusiasts, teachers teaching about the science of sound, or audiophiles! Check it out 👇
www.galacticpolymath.com/blog/dive-in...

Book quote from kindle app reading: THE SORT OF RAGE THAT IS ONLY SEEN WHEN RICH FOLK THAT HAVE MORE THAN THEY CAN ENJOY SUDDENLY LOSE SOMETHING THAT THEY HAVE LONG HAD BUT HAVE NEVER BEFORE USED OR WANTED. J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit: 75th Anniversary Edition #kindlequotes

muchas gracias! espero que sea útil para ti

Dive into Sound with SoundLab: A Free Tool for Acoustic Exploration — Galactic Polymath Ever wondered what a bird song looks like, or how to visually understand the different frequencies in your favorite music? That's where SoundLab comes in! SoundLab is a free, web-based app designed to...

thanks for the repost! We're actually not doing fundraising anymore. The project is live!
Check it out here:
www.galacticpolymath.com/blog/dive-in...

When I began studying bird song 16 yrs ago, my daily experience of the world changed forever. Since then, I've wanted to help others get curious about croaks, chirps & whistles at the edge of their hearing. What's making that? Why? What are they saying? Plz check it out & share! 👇🐋🐦‍⬛🐸🔊 #EduSky

this court says that allowing EPA to regulate carbon emissions is a "major question" that demands congressional debate. but allowing the president to, with a flick of the wrist, end a straightforward constitutional right is something that must be allowed to stand?

It makes me very happy to see teacher demand grow for these resources we developed with scientists over the last 4+ years with Broader Impacts NSF grant funds 😊 And very dismayed that future funds are being slashed & news today that NSF is even being booted out of its office building 😖 #SaveNSF 🧪

National Science Foundation Staff Booted From Headquarters - Eos Staff at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were notified on 25 June that the agency’s office space, located in Alexandria, Va., will be taken over by Department of Housing and Urban Development (H...

I know there’s a lot of news right now but this is really crazy. They’re booting the National Science Foundation out of its newish building with no plans for where 1800 people are going to go.

"I love thresher sharks because they look how I constantly feel." and a photo of a thresher shark from the side profile, showing only one eye, a slightly open mouth and snubby little nose. I think there's a watermark that says Paul Flandinette?

This meme asks a really good question about why the thresher shark has such expressive eyes & why those eyes always seem so concerned or shocked.

What's up, in other words, with the squaliform side-eye?

I have an answer!

thank you, this is the content I needed this morning 🦈

Dive into Sound with SoundLab: A Free Tool for Acoustic Exploration — Galactic Polymath Ever wondered what a bird song looks like, or how to visually understand the different frequencies in your favorite music? That's where SoundLab comes in! SoundLab is a free, web-based app designed to...

Good news! After almost a year of development, we're so pleased to share SoundLab: An #openaccess tool for *seeing* & analyzing sounds. Intended as a teaching tool for middle school to college—introduce students to #bioacoustics & the science of sound 🧪🔊🐋🪶🎶🐦‍⬛
www.galacticpolymath.com/blog/dive-in...

When I began studying bird song 16 yrs ago, my daily experience of the world changed forever. Since then, I've wanted to help others get curious about croaks, chirps & whistles at the edge of their hearing. What's making that? Why? What are they saying? Plz check it out & share! 👇🐋🐦‍⬛🐸🔊 #EduSky

a black fish with a clear head is swimming in the ocean ALT: a black fish with a clear head is swimming in the ocean

Today I’m thinking about Macropinna microstoma—the fish with a see-through head. All brain, no filter. Just floating through pressure and poison, watching everything. May we all be so transparent and unbothered. #DeepSeaMood

What happens when NIH is under threat?
📉 Fewer clinical trials.
💔 No new treatments for cancer, rare diseases.

And long-term? We surrender our global leadership in biomedical research.

NIHers risked everything to speak out, b/c the stakes are life and death.

Stand with them here⬇️
zurl.co/OArEE

For the last 4+ years I've been trying to build capacity to mobilize knowledge into classrooms through #openaccess curriculum developed with researchers (with @galacticpolymath.com). We're making significant progress, even as our NSF funding is being attacked. #saveNSF 🧪
bsky.app/profile/gala...

similar story--a project I'm supporting. Initial funding recommendation in December, infuriating request to remove DEI terms in May, followed by formal funding in June. Absolutely unacceptable timeline, censorship, & politicization, but sadly what amounts to success in this environment. Orwellian!

I am once again pitching my romantic comedy:

- two academics start dating
- discover they are each other's terrible reviewer
- hijinks ensue

Working title: Love is Double-Blind

NIH indirect cost cuts will affect the economy and employment - Nature Human Behaviour Nature Human Behaviour - NIH indirect cost cuts will affect the economy and employment

The proposed NIH budget cuts would lead to an estimated $16 billion in economic losses and the elimination of 68,000 jobs
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dear Colleagues: Now is the time to scale up public engagement with science Matt Wilkins: I address this letter to scientists, but it is an invitation for fans and defenders of science everywhere to unite and take action!

K-12 is where every person goes to learn about the world *for a grade*! It's foundational for societal alignment to science & critical thinking. So, as we figure out how to get thru the next 4 yrs, let's also apply some systems thinking & strategy to #scicomm 🧪
civicsciencemedia.org/dear-colleag...

For the last 4+ years I've been trying to build capacity to mobilize knowledge into classrooms through #openaccess curriculum developed with researchers (with @galacticpolymath.com). We're making significant progress, even as our NSF funding is being attacked. #saveNSF 🧪
bsky.app/profile/gala...

Frontiers | Scaling the wall: overcoming barriers to STEM knowledge mobilization Improving science literacy is crucial amidst global challenges like climate change, emerging diseases, AI, and rampant disinformation. This is vital not only...

These figures are from a perspective I wrote with a veteran science teacher, an education researcher, a biologist, and a leader in science outreach.
"Scaling the wall: overcoming barriers to STEM knowledge mobilization"
www.frontiersin.org/journals/com...

Figure 2. A figure showing a systems view of how STEM professionals connect to students as a circular puzzle. STEM professionals are the outer ring, with students in the center. Separating these are teachers, which are the primary conduit to students, and another layer that connects to teachers. There are very few connections between STEM professionals and teachers, making it very difficult to mobilize knowledge to Students. Original caption: Figure 2. The primary scalable infrastructure for mobilizing knowledge from STEM professionals into formal (i.e., not afterschool) K-12 classrooms. Individual efforts of STEM professionals to connect with individual teachers or students are not included, as this figure illustrates the knowledge mobilization infrastructure for classroom outreach. Critically, teachers are the conduit through which resources must flow to reach the target audience of students. Tabs on the puzzle pieces indicate the direction of knowledge flow. Yellow outlines indicate bidirectional flow of knowledge with teachers. The dashed line around “Scholar-Educator Alliances” signifies the fragmented and often transient nature of platforms like NSF’s defunct GK-12 and NIH’s ongoing SEPA program, that provide scalable training and resources for supporting formal classroom outreach.

When folks talk about whether we should dedicate time to #scicomm or "the fight against fascism, it's a false dichotomy. The infrastructure of scicomm is what's failing us—we're not connecting w/ target audiences. We need to construct the missing pieces to nurture civics, empathy, & science literacy

Figure 1. (a conceptual figure showing a brick wall rising to the right, with points labeling types of outreach, with K-12 required classes being flat ground and scientific journal articles.) STEM identity is a barrier for certain types of outreach. This hypothetical curve represents the minimum level of STEM engagement required for audience members to seek out and/or benefit from a particular outreach effort. The Y-Axis represents STEM identity as the amount of overlap a person sees between themselves and STEM (McDonald et al., 2019). The X-Axis represents audience selectivity, maximized at the far right, as only highly STEM-engaged individuals (with complete overlap between how they perceive “Me” and “STEM”) will seek out, read, and understand scientific articles. At the far left, K-12 STEM required classes (e.g., general science) have broad audiences, including students who do not see STEM as relevant in their lives at all. In between are a variety of outreach approaches requiring intermediate levels of interest and prior knowledge to be effective in improving overall STEM understanding and engagement.

Agreed! The #scicomm convo needs to shift from what's the message? to How do we disseminate it? The right mobilizes nonsense & lies in hours. It takes us 20 yrs to get new research into classrooms. We've completely neglected K-12 as the KEY place to inoculate the public against manipulation 🧪

this happening the same day Trump threatens Iran...the weekend after my elected state legislators were attacked in their homes, with 2 dead. Science is in tatters. The world reels from mindless trade wars. The survival of the Republic depends on Republicans showing an ounce of courage. Fuck