Well, the world of EBM teaching has once more benefited from the bilingual brilliance of Amanda Burls [@ajburls for the Tweeterati], in a superb hour-long lecture at the 16th Oxford Conference on Teaching Evidence Based Medicine.

Gardening and teaching are not too different, it seems. The role of the facilitator is to encourage growth of the tiny flowers by providing warmth, nutrients and watering them. And to make the little seeds of knowledge grow, you need to give them a little help.

As a teacher, you can make a space in the mind of the learner, a learning need, by setting a question without clear answer. And it doesn’t have to be obvious – for example, the title of this blog is probably an unfamiliar word to many … and you might be reading to get to the meaning … and here it comes.

A dibber is a lovely bit of garden kit. It makes a hole that you pop a seed into, and a bit of dibbed earth is crying out to be filled. Just like the hungry mind. So when you next set out to enthuse about EBM, give your audience a reason why they want to stick around and hear you through – go dibbing.