Online Resources for Teachers
There are many excellent on-line education resources for Biotechnology and Genetics. Here are a few to get you started… Please send us your suggestions for additions to this list - thanks!
Access Excellence is the National Health Museum’s site for “health and
bioscience teaching and learning”. Many ideas and interactive
activities.
www.accessexcellence.org
The website
for the American Society of Human Genetics has a list of educational
resources and descriptions of careers in genetics.
http://www.ashg.org/education/
BioEd
Online: This website
includes streaming video presentations, slide sets and lesson plans,
along with a continuous science news feed from Nature, and free
on-line web based workshops
http://www.BioEdOnline.org
The EXCITE
(Excellence in Curriculum Integration Through Teaching Epidemiology)
program from the Centers for Disease Control is really about
epidemiology, however this includes some interesting classroom materials
for teachers, including middle school science curriculum about
scientific method, statistics, microbiology and disease
transmission. The main CDC website (www.cdc.gov)
has lots of great disease information also. You can get short,
understandable summaries of major disease outbreaks in the US – a
good way to keep curriculum relevant.
http://www.cdc.gov/excite
Colorado
State University provides Transgenic Crops: An Introduction and Resource Guide, including articles, slide presentations
and assignments to facilitate learning about transgenic crops.
http://cls.casa.colostate.edu/TransgenicCrops
The Dolan
Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor provides a wealth of resources
for educators. These include on-line laboratories, free-access
databases (Bioservers) used by scientists and educators world-wide,
and the wonderful Biology Animation Library (Great PCR animation!) –
found under the Resources section. You may have to download free
software from Macromedia to run the animations, the Dolan site links
you to the downloads.
http://www.dnalc.org
The Genetics
Education Center at the University of Kansas Medical Center has LOTS
of lesson-plans, including a simulated genetic counseling session.
http://www.kumc.edu/gec/
The Genetic Science
Learning Center web site at the University of Utah has a wide
selection of teacher resources including virtual labs.
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/
The Howard
Hughes Medical Institute provides an opportunity for kids and adults
to ask biology questions.
http://askascientist.org
The
National Human Genome Research Institute
has an incredible list of
on-line educational resources links.
http://www.genome.gov
The National
Institute of Health curriculum supplement series has extensive
materials in various formats on current areas of research including:
Using Technology to Study Cellular and Molecular Biology, Cell
Biology and Cancer, and Human Genetic Variation, among others.
http://science.education.nih.gov
The
National Institute of Standards and Technology website is an
excellent source of information about short tandem repeats used in
forensic DNA analysis and human identity testing.
http://www.cstl.nist.gov/div831/strbase
The National
Science Teachers Association organizes URLs by grade level, content
using the National Science Education Standards. It also includes
lesson plans and other teacher support materials.
http://sciguides.nsta.org
Oklahoma City Community College
offers an incredible web resource designed for high school teachers teaching about
biotechnology! The College received grant money to
develop this extensive site organizing/categorizing Biotech Internet
resources, including on-line labs, curriculum, etc. CHECK IT OUT!
http://www.okc.cc.ok.us/biotech/
Promega
Corporation
Links for educational units and the company's the training support program
(50% discount) are provided. In addition, the tabs at the top are
useful too; “Resources” includes many technical service resources
such as protocols, MSDS sheets, “Profiles in DNA” (with interesting
descriptions of forensic applications) and even training videos.
The “Products” tab is useful for ordering.
http://www.promega.com/education
The University
of Nebraska at Lincoln Ag Biosafety Education Center website
provides
good background information for teachers on the biotechnology of
transgenic plants. Includes links to several lesson plans.
http://agbiosafety.unl.edu/education.shtml
Virginia
Commonwealth University has compiled the best video segments (to
download for free) from the PBS series “Secrets of the Sequence”,
along with accompanying lesson plans.
http://www.vcu.edu/lifesci/sosq
Why Files
A Wisconsin
Resource! The Why Files is a free online magazine from UW that
explores the science behind the headlines (example: Stem Cells). It
includes Teacher Activity Pages and resources. A new article is
featured each week.
http://whyfiles.org
NOTE: Last updated January 26, 2009.