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REFERENCES 1. Foote, S. 1958. The civil war: a narrative. Random House, New York, NY. Elisabeth Davis Elder Louisiana State University at Alexandria, Alexandria, LA E-mail:
[email protected]
WEBSITES/ONLINE RESOURCES The Newest Educational and Engaging On-Line Resources for Students and Instructors from National Geographic Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v14i1.589 Review of: National Geographic Education – Online Teaching Resources, http://education.nationalgeographic.com/ education/teaching-resources/?ar_a=1. We have all come to know and love the engaging, visual content from National Geographic. Recently they have expanded their outreach efforts in education, increasing their educational programs and resources for schools, outof-school settings, and the home. The goals of National Geographic Education are twofold: 1) Increased “Geo-literacy,” an understanding of how the world works and how people and places are connected, and 2) “Educational Outreach,” maximized impact of the National Geographic Society’s rich media, scientific, and exploration programs on their education audience. The National Geographic Education website contains high-quality materials and programs for both educators and learners that can be accessed online, in print, and in person at http://education.nationalgeographic.com. This review specifically examines the teaching resources aimed at K–12 education but these can be adapted for introductory college science courses. The website also focuses on developing cutting-edge learning technologies; their aim is to apply innovative uses of technology to more effectively reach learners in and out of the classroom. I feel they are off to a great start. Let me warn you that you may not want to explore this website unless you have plenty of time. As a biologist, I found myself wandering all over the site, spending lots of time reading various materials and watching the fascinating videos! I decided to review the “Genetic Markers: Connecting the Dots” activity which is aimed at grades 9–12. This activity involves looking at how genetic markers can help us understand ancient human migration routes. The lesson plan is helpful and provides learning objectives, teaching methods, connections to science standards, preparation guide, timeline, guided activity, background information, and vocabulary. The activity can easily be linked to biotechnology, evolution, and human migration to be used in an introductory biology class. A “Do More with this Volume 14, Number 1
Resource” link is helpful in assigning additional videos and readings. The website also includes an interactive map builder where students can build a map of human migrations. I found this activity to be engaging, thoughtful, thorough, accurate, and easily executable. I especially recommend it for a high school biology class and would consider it with some changes for the college classroom. Next on my journey was checking out the “Activity Index” page where one can narrow one’s search by age, audience, and subject. I selected the “Marine Food Chains and Biodiversity” activity, which explores five separate marine ecosystems. While parts of the activity were elementary for a college level class, it could be modified for higher-level use. The activity included several videos that are a great introduction to hook students into the topic. Even if I do not assign this activity in my class, I will use the videos. Do you need a quick idea on adaptations of animals of the arctic, or maybe some information on elephant behavior? Visit the “Education Blog,” where you will find beautiful pictures and engaging educational stories. Students and instructors may also enjoy and find useful the associated Facebook page or Twitter feed. For instructors and students alike this website accomplishes its goals of providing high-quality educational material. I plan to use it as a video resource library to help introduce topics in my introductory biology class. I will also consider assigning some of the videos in our course management system to prime the students for upcoming lectures. The only negative feedback is that since this is a free website, the videos begin with a brief advertisement, but overall I feel this is a small price to pay for the ability to access this engaging material. Kendra M. Hill South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD E-mail:
[email protected] Two Virtual Labs to Study Genetic Inheritance in the Fruit Fly DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v14i1.580 Comparative review of: Drosophila, an online lab simulation, by Virtual Courseware for Inquiry-based Science Education, http://www.sciencecourseware.org/vcise/drosophila/; and Virtual Genetics Laboratory II, an online lab simulation by the University of Massachusetts, Boston, http://vgl.umb.edu/. Labs demonstrating Mendelian genetics are illuminating for students but pose potential complications. Typical hands-on, in-person experimental models involve plants (which grow slowly) or fruit flies (which require strict timeframes for particular steps – something nearly impossible for high school or a commuter undergraduate campus). The advent of virtual labs allows students to struggle through mating strategies in order to draw conclusions about modes of inheritance (by simulating actual matings)
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without having to organize their real-life schedules around isolating Drosophila virgins. The first virtual fruit fly lab road-tested was the Virtual Genetics Lab II version 3.2.0 (VGLII3.2.0) produced by a team at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The program has pre-set “problems” which are individual crosses of parental fruit flies. Students must do subsequent additional crosses and analyze offspring to deduce the mode of inheritance. The problems can be worked on in a “practice” mode where the mode of inheritance can be revealed with a simple click, and there are replicas of these problems without this feature so students are forced to solve for the mode of inheritance through their own trial and error. However both practice and non-practice versions are available to anyone who downloads the software, making it difficult to use this as an assessment tool for distance learners or as homework. It would, however, be easy to delete practice versions on classroom computers to make this an excellent in-class activity. Progeny from one or more matings can be viewed in a summary chart that can be easily manipulated to show or hide sex, phenotype, etc., for fast, quantitative analysis. While a good tool overall, there are some drawbacks to the program. It requires download of an executable file as well as an appropriate Java environment; and with different versions for various operating systems, this could cause “hiccups” for distance learners. Additionally, some of the walk-throughs were written for a previous version of the program and have not yet been updated to reflect attributes of the new system. Finally, assessment is extremely limited since there are no quizzes or opportunities to record substantive conclusions at any point – such exercises would have to be developed separately by the instructor.
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The second resource investigated was from Virtual Courseware for Inquiry-based Science Education (VCISE). VCISE allows a user to review applicability to K–12 science standards by state, showing that the learning objectives of the program will integrate easily into a course curriculum. Unlike the VGLII3.2.0, this interface operates entirely online (no downloads) and visually simulates all steps of an actual mating lab. One must put flies in mating jars, place and retrieve the jars from incubators, anesthetize the flies, sort them under a microscope, etc. Mimicking these actual steps (as opposed to simply receiving numerical data as in VGLII3.2.0) adds a completely different feel to the exercise. Whereas both programs allow one to keep track of mating results, VCISE allows the participant to save information about each step in a virtual lab notebook, again simulating a genuine lab operation. Finally, this program helps students build a lab report: students follow prompts to build a report online with quantitative analysis along with qualitative answers and images from their notebook. One of the best features of this software is that with minimal preparation, an instructor can set up a class code whereby students can save their work and build a report which can be monitored and graded online. In summary, while both programs allow a studentdirected approach whereby students choose fly matings and interpret the mode of inheritance based on offspring, the VCISE program is more ideally structured to visually engage students and facilitate instructor assessment of student learning. Robin Herlands Cresiski Nevada State College, Henderson, NV E-mail:
[email protected]
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Volume 14, Number 1
