Mar

19

More and more cool biology sites

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Life seems continually busy, so I’m always amazed that I can discover more and more elaborate educational sites. I’m not amazed that I can find them, just that someone out there seems to have an awful lot of spare time to make them. How do they manage?

  1. The Virtual Cell is a simple tour of a cell with some neat little flash effects. I’ve seen students as young as Grade 7 learn the parts of a cell, so this could be a great study aid for these younger students.
  2. YouTube has a fairly dry video on leukocytes. These and other parts of the cell are featured. It’s the kind of video I used to see in my high school bio classes, but now it’s free and students can use it to study any time they feel like.
  3. ScienceFriday.com has an intriguing collection of videos. I haven’t had a chance to look at them, but any site with a video called “Growing a Heart” has got to be interesting.
  4. Last but not least, this video shows a bacterium being pursued to the death. It may not quite be a chase scence from a Bond film, but it’s still mighty cool to watch.

Mar

3

A really ambitious biology project

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This is a website that has some really serious potential. The Encyclopedia of Life is a valiant attempt to list and describe all known species of life.

There are about 25 pages that are complete. They have descriptions, pictures, maps, and about everything you could want in a biology resource.

Tens of thousands more pages are in some state of development while about one million more pages list a species and provide little more information than that.

When they get this project fully functional - a daunting task, to say the least - this should be one of the most incredible resources a high school biology class could want. Right now, it’s not too helpful because you’re most likely to find the page you need on the species you want still under development.

Feb

8

The Visible Body

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I found a great biology site. The Visible Body is a 3-D rendering of the human body that can be viewed from different angles. You can add different systems (muscles, circulatory, etc) onto a sketeton and take them off to give you a clear idea how all the different body systems fit together.

When I tried it out at school, it loaded very slowly. That could be because it’s a very large file (which it is) but is probably also due to our school’s Internet link being really pokey lately.

The Visible Body is also free to use (but you do have to register) and if your school’s budget is limited (and who’s isn’t?) that’s a big plus.

Nov

9

Is that a fish or what?

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This handy dandy little site, Build a Fish, is a great one for explaining the adaptation of the underwater set. You choose your fish’s habitat, and then are given options what type of head/mouth, body, and tail your fish should have. Once you’ve made your choices, you can check its survivability. If you’ve built a fish that can survive in that habitat, the site lets you know.

This website would be a great starting point for a discussion of marine animal adaptations. Why do certain fish do well in certain environments and not others? This is a simple but clear way to illustrate the points and get a discussion going.

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