DNA Interactive (DNAi)

DNAi is an interactive website all about DNA and DNA technologies.  It includes modules such as the historical timelines for the discoveries in DNA science, how the genetic code was discovered, how scientists manipulate DNA and organisms, as well as applications of DNA technology.  The modules include audio, video, interviews, and animations.  The modules aren't as interactive as I would hope...there is not a lot of input needed from the student, just moving from page to page, but they are still very informative and would be a great addition to lecture notes.  Students can get a good visual representation of some concepts that are very abstract.

Along with the modules, teachers can also register for free and receive access to lesson plans, teacher guides, and can also construct a personal webpage for a class (you have to be a teacher at a school, and alas, I am not :-(  ).  But whenever I get that job this will be one place that I will be sure to visit again!

The web address is:  www.dnai.org

Enjoy!

WOW addres...

Sorry all...I forgot to leave the address for Water on the Web.  So here it is!

www.waterontheweb.org

Pretty easy...and cool!

Water on the Web and more!

I don't know about anyone else, but I get overwhelmed sometimes with the cool stuff that comes up on a search for these different resources in the classroom!  Every time I try to focus on one thing I get distracted by others that are just as awesome...but enough about my difficulties concentrating.  I checked out a site that I had used in my undergraduate ecology lab course called Water on the Web (WOW).  I have been tossing around the idea of doing a stream ecology project for my PBL plan.  This website collects stream data for 5 streams (rivers) in Minnesota.  This data includes temperature, flow, turbidity, and more.  I in the course that I took, we used this real time data and the data we collected to determine the health of the stream.  I could see using this or a site like this to enable students to use real-time data to predict and make conclusions about what is happening in a particular stream.  The only limitation to this site is that it only monitors a select few lakes and streams in Minnesota.  I went to school in Duluth and many of the streams they monitor are there, but you could still use this data as part of a unit even if you aren't in the area.

In response to the comments from my last post, I agree that the NCBI site would be a little difficult for a regular 10th grade biology class, but could definitely be used in an AP course.  It would take a lot of work on the teacher's end though to make sure that they fully understand how to use the different applications and what each of the results are showing...but super cool none-the-less!

First Blog...

This is my first blog entry ever, so I hope that it goes over well!  This week I looked into using the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) website as a tool in a biology classroom, specifically at the 10th grade level.  During my student teaching, on of the teachers in the biology department had developed an entire evolution unit around the data that is presented on just a small part of that website.  It includes a program called BLAST, which essentially finds similar regions...specifically it "compares nucleotide or protein sequences to sequence databases and calculates the statistical significance of matches".  The end result shows the relationship between different proteins.  This teacher used different species of penguins and had the students determine how related they were first by just looking at their physical characteristics and then using BLAST to see how they were related genetically (sorry if this is getting too science-y...but its pretty cool!).  I started looking at this site and spent forever on it, and still felt overwhelmed!  I found an article by Grisham et al (2010) that used a small part of this immense website to design a quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis.  They found that the students who participated in this module better understood the content presented and were more engaged in the learning process.  I would really like to spend a lot more time understanding what resources are available through this site and how I could use this in my own classroom.