Dear CCP4 members,
I'm not sure what the situation is like in other countries but in the US while we try to minimize the spread of infection many of us in education are discovering the joys of Zoom and the like and making lectures, lessons, coursework etc. electronic. Within our community a vast resource of educational material is being collected. We're also seeing some amazing work coming out of government research organizations, explaining the crisis and what structural biology is doing to help it on different sets of levels. Because we make the invisible visible, I believe we should make an effort to capture this material - maybe not in the instant but when this is beyond us - and save it as a unique resource. I know this is not strictly a CCP4 topic, and that there are more pressing thoughts around the world, but I put this out there as a thought, an embryonic idea if you like. A means to capture a snapshot of both expert teaching and a learning resource that might be as useful today as it would tomorrow - learning from the current fight so that we can better impact future wars but also day to day biological discovery. Some schools like to keep courses protected, other individuals may be uncomfortable sharing their material. In my time I have seen some amazing presentations -one or two slides completely nail a topic (some will immediately know what those slides are). Even that may be useful to capture somewhere. I have not posted this to start a discussion - many of us are busier now than we were before. I'm hoping that there are some out there who will think about this, ponder on it, and perhaps refine the idea to something better. An organization like the IUCr for example, could coordinate an international effort where key material could be available in multiple languages. Diverse teaching generates new ideas creating new solutions. This would capture a diversity in teaching that may refine material in our own teaching and only have a positive benefit on the next generation of structural biologists. The American Crystallographic Association meeting this year has a transactions session on "Structural Science: New Ways to Teach the Next Generation", "Open Exchanges In Crystallographic Education" and "Communicating Science to the Public" - Maybe we can apply some of our lessons today to be thinking about those topics and capturing the successes (and failures as well). The meeting is monitoring the situation and who knows, some of these sessions may become examples of that new way of teaching. It's a beautiful Spring day in New York State today but it's quiet outside my window. While the events are tragic, we're all worried, and fear and anxiety abound, we can do something. We can physically isolate, but we can come together as kindred spirits. Spring will turn into summer and we'll beat this stuff. There will be tragic stories along the way, but there will be triumphs that help us, many from the work of this community. Thinking about everyone else out there - Stay safe and stay healthy, Eddie ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1
