BioBook

The BioBook is an iPad and web-enabled interactive biology textbook for college level. Educators can track individual student progress and develop content from a national database of educator-contributed material. Students can explore concepts following branched, interlinked idea paths. Unlike storybook formats, chapters are structured into threaded learning where all students start with the same basic material and then digress along concepts that intrigue them. Along the exploration path, students encounter interactive activities, such as self-assessment quizzes and annotation boxes.


BioBook was developed by Daniel Johnson and Fred Macosko of Wake Forest University and the Odigia company, with a grant from Gates Foundation. Johnson is working on producing an official BioBook, using contributions from academic partners around the world who can upload their own chapters into a national database using the open-source education platform, Moodle. Which chapters will make it to the official book? The technology provides suggestions since BioBook collects data from students as they work on the chapters. The contributors will automatically know what students like and don't like about the e-book.


"In 2010, 19 students in a first-year seminar course led by Macosko showed how engaging the BioBook model is by writing and uploading a total of 130 new Learning and Organizational Nodes for BioBook in a single semester. 'The quality of the nodes, speed with which students generated them, and their enthusiasm for writing the nodes were all very high, as measured by an end-of-class survey and reflection essays,' reported Johnson." For more details, read the Wake University press release. 


YouTube has several videos on the topic, for example: BioBook Tutorial: Supplemental Materials. Just type in BioBook Tutorial in search for a list of videos.

Interactive Science/Math

Howtosmile.org, from the University of California, is an online collection of thousands of hands-on interactive science and math activities dedicated to making learning exciting and engaging for everyone. All activities are freely accessible. Howtosmile.org, funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the National Science Digital Library, brings together a consortium of science museums across the country to empower educators working with students in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology.

Timetree of Life

The Timetree of Life contains electronic files of articles and figures from the book The Timetree of Life (2009), Oxford University Press, and a wall poster. These resources are copyrighted but are provided free for personal, research, or educational use.

TimeTree is a public knowledge-base for information on the evolutionary timescale of life. A search utility allows exploration of the thousands of divergence times among organisms in the published literature. A tree-based (hierarchical) system is used to identify all published molecular time estimates bearing on the divergence of two chosen taxa, such as species, compute summary statistics, and present the results. Check out the "resources" section, too, for links to other sites that focus on evolutionary history.

High-Tech Nature/Science

Science and Nature magazines will co-launch an open-access, online-only journal in April 2010. The name of the Journal is being decided by text-message vote by the public. Preprints will be posted on a special social networking Web site where scientists registered in the newly created Faculty of a Million can vote for acceptance by pressing a "Like" thumbs-up button or reject the paper by pressing a “Dislike” button. Another innovation will be a ground-breaking iPad application that will allow scientists to view charts, images, and figures in 3-D. And readers will have the option of Skyping authors directly simply by clicking that author's name. (Magazine cover in the photo is a draft.)

Student Copyright Awareness

Intellectual Vengeance is a film about plagiarism included in Lesson 1 of Creative Thinking. This resource unfolds with a student who deliberately plagiarizes a paper for another student, thus tarnishing his reputation.

Northern Kentucky University (NKU) has developed lesson plans and videos that teachers can use to teach students about plagiarism, copyright, and fair use. Tied to national and state educational standards, Creative Thinking offers engaging content for teens and young adults in multiple disciplines. It could also be used for public library teen programs and community youth groups. The lesson content promotes research honesty and copyright consciousness for students. Both ethical and legal discussions are presented.

Evolution Symposia Media

The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), in conjunction with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), will again co-sponsor an evolution symposium at the 2009 National Association of Biology Teachers(NABT)professional development conference. The symposium will be held on Friday, November 13 in Denver, Colorado. "Evolution in Extreme Environments" offers presentations and a workshop on evolution in five extreme environments.

Those unable to attend this year's NABT conference will be able to participate in the symposium via live webcast on Friday, November 13th from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm, MST, for all or part of the webcast. For full program information and the link to view the live webcast, visit NESCent.

The presentations from previous symposia are available on the NESCent website. The presentations are movies of each speaker, both audio and visual of the scientists, synchronized with the slides from their PowerPoints. Teaching and learning resources and references related to the symposia are free for anyone to view and use. (The photo is the cover of a CD from the AIBS media library. It is not a supplement to this year's symposium.)

Ocean Gazing Podcasts

University of Washington oceanography professor John Delaney is featured on the first Ocean Gazing podcast .

The Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence Networked Ocean World (COSEE-NOW) has launched of a new biweekly podcast: Ocean Gazing. The podcasts investigate some of the ocean's secrets, for example: find out how to detect underwater earthquakes, take photos of some of the smallest ocean creatures, measure the ocean's temperature, and much more.

Each episode features a "Sonic Stumper," where we you call in or email your guesses. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes using the following link.

Academic Earth Videos

Academic Earth, a social entrepreneurship venture focused on expanding the availability of high-quality educational opportunities for people around the globe, has launched AcademicEarth.org. This site offers free access to online video of full courses and guest lectures from leading educational institutions including Yale, Harvard, and MIT. The catalog of videos, spanning nearly all academic subjects, including biology, contains full courses and lectures. The videos are available through a clean, user-friendly interface that allows visitors to browse by subject, university, or instructor.

Podcast Resources

Podcasting is a technology that helps bridge the gap between content delivery and today’s “digital native” students. Podcasting is a method of making audio or video content available regularly via the Web. It blends topical research and knowledge collection with a radio- or TV-style presentation that’s perfect for the attention span and learning style of today’s students.

In The Educator's Podcast Guide, author Bard Williams begins with a complete introduction to podcasting, including hardware and software needs, integrating podcasts into your curriculum, and managing podcasts in the classroom. Williams then introduces a smorgasbord of education-related podcasts sorted by curriculum area. Part user manual, part curriculum planning tool, and part implementation survival guide, the book is an good resource for any educator who would like to integrate this exciting tool into the classroom.

Darwin Online

We celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) this year. Educators will find a cornucopia of classroom activities online that illustrate Darwin's extraordinary life and achievements. The following are a few recommendations.


- About Darwin: View maps of the historical journey of the HMS Beagle and a timeline of Darwin’s journey and research data.
- AMNH exhibit: Discover the man and learn about his ideas in this interactive exhibit. Includes interesting videos.
- Darwin's writings: Links to online copies of all editions of Charles Darwin’s literature.
- Voyage of Discovery: Activities from PBS to teach about Darwin's great journey.
- "Endless forms most beautiful" webcast: In lecture one of a four part series, evolutionary biologist Sean Carroll discusses Darwin and his two most important ideas: natural selection and common ancestry.
- Darwin Special Issue: The journal Evolution Education and Outreach has free pdf downloads of its articles celebrating Darwin's birthday.

(Photo: AMNH Exhibit online)

Science Glossaries for EL Students

Do you know that Google has a translation tool? On the Google search page, in the navigation options, click on "more". At the bottom of that pull-down is the "even more" option. Choose it to find a list of tools. You will fine Translate in the section titled Communicate, Show & Share. Type your text in the field provided and choose the appropriate language.

Another free, online tool comes courtesy of McGraw-Hill. The Multilingual Science Glossary presents an extensive vocabulary list, with each term and definition translated into 13 different languages. There are separate glossaries for middle and high school.

Hispanic-speaking students might find the Pearson Audio Glossary for the Earth Sciences interesting. They can hear how some terms are pronounced in English and Spanish. There's also the Genome.gov talking glossaries in English and Spanish.

BEN: Digital Biology Education Library

Biosciednet.org, or BEN for short, is the biology education pathway of the National Science Digital Pathway. Over 11,187 reviewed resources to date, covering 77 biological sciences topics, are available. BEN resources can help you engage student interest, shorten lesson preparation time, provide concept updates, and develop curricula that are in line with national standards for content.

You can locate resources in several different ways: basic keyword search, advanced search, "browse by subject", and "browse by resource type". Only about 10 percent of the BEN resources require a subscription or fee to view the resource. If you do not want to see fee-based resources in your searches, an option is provided to view free records only. Currently, registration is not required in exchange for access to the wealth of information freely available through the BEN Portal. Users retain the option to register and/or login to join the library's community of 10,046 biological science educators.

Digital Libraries

A digital library is a library where collections are stored in a digital format rather than print or microfiche formats and which are accessed by computer. They are libraries in cyberspace that can be used by anyone at anytime and anywhere. Some digital libraries are designed specifically for educators, providing teaching and learning materials. The educational virtual libraries are credible sources for educators because they have staff that reviews, selects and structures resources.

There are digital libraries that cover all teaching subjects, such as MERLOT. Others focus on a particular subject, such as the science specific NSDL. This blog provides links to some of these on its home page menu.

What about students? Your school district will have a digital library accessible to them. Virtual libraries for students or the general public not associated with an educational or public institution are just beginning to emerge. One fine example is The International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) where youngsters can read books in their preferred language and save books to their personal bookshelf.