Inquiry activities

I have been enjoying seeing other students ideas in the last few classes. It has been interesting to see varying interpretation of 'inquiry' as well. Some clearly view it as anything the student thinks up for themselves while others view it as experimental discovery by the students. All ideas have been great and something I would enjoy using in my future classes. Interestingly, our group worked on 3C microbiology unit and it turns out that I will be teaching that unit on this practicum, from theory to practice in one easy step! Hopefully I will be able to use some of the activities our group designed and see how well they translate to a real classroom. I have been doing a great deal of observation lately between observation days and volunteering at a local high school and I definitely feel that variety is the key to an interesting and motivating classroom environment and developing KICA books has encouraged us to design activities to meet these goals. They will be a fantastic resource in the future!

My first biology practicum

I thought I would blog of the actual course topics this week because I was able to visit my last practicum school on Friday. My first two practicums have both been chemistry, which is probably a good thing as that is my weaker subject so a little practice is always good. However, I am definitely looking forward to teaching biology this time (well and grade 9 electricity... Yikes!).
I will be able to teach grade 11 college biology for their microbiology unit and grade 12 university for the evolution unit. I have been told that teaching the evolution unit will be a little interesting as the student population is very religious so its actually a good idea to include a little info on creationism too. So its going to be an interesting practicum. For the first time I will get to teach my lessons more than once which I am also excited about. I am looking forward to trying to improve a lesson between its 'first' and 'second' runs as I think that will be an excellent experience. So all in all, it looks like a great final practicum where I will get to teach in my preferred subject so it will no doubt be lots of fun!

Visual Networks

I think this is a very fun and useful type of activity for students. I'm sure they would resist the first unit but if you just made it part of the course, and maybe did the first section of a unit as a class or group activity they would warm up to it. Its definitely good for processing the information. I guess this is kind of how I processed information when I made my study notes, as I always had to rearrange the information from the order in which it was taught, my way of making the connections meaningful for me. It was definitely an effective way to study and to focus on the important points. This is just a structured way to teach your students how to do it and with practice I think they would get good at it and come to like it. As a teacher you'd have to be careful to make sure you were grading quality of connections and content not how 'pretty' it was though. Otherwise I think its a great activity that I look forward to using with my students.

DNA and the nature of a revolution

First,I would like to say that i appreciated that you chose to spend a little time on debriefing from the racism video yesterday.

Now, as to a conversation started earlier, I would like to express my view on teaching DNA as a scientific revolution. I think it would be a gross misrepresentation of the dynamic nature of science and the biological sciences to teach that evolution was the last revolution. You claim DNA was not a revolution. However, most of the field of biology would call DNA a revolution and not even the latest. THere is in fact another revolution in thinking and understanding happening as we speak in the field of RNA research, and yes it IS a revolution.
The discovery of DNA changed the way EVERY scientist in EVERY biological field thought, worked and interpreted their field and their experiments. Yes, evolution also did this. However, I firmly believe DNA is an even more important revolution. Knowlegde about DNA has changed not only scientists lives (like evolution) but has changed everyone's life (unlike evolution). For the first time in human history we can conclusively proof guilt or innocence, parental lineage, tell whether you will get the same disease as your parents, in fact tell what disease, exactly we have. And DNA is providing the tools to treat and even cure these diseases. You no longer have to wish desperately for a child without your genetic disorder, you can test embryos and implant only the healthy ones. Within the next 20-30 years there will be the option to run your DNA against standard DNA to tell you what diseases you have or have pre-disposition to. Will you have a stroke? Alzheimers? Take a sample of blood and find out.
A discovery/idea that has quite literally changed the nature of all the biological sciences forever and changed the everyday lives of people. What more could you want from a revolution?
I for one fully intend to teach biology as a very dynamic field full of rapid discoveries and reversals/alterations in thinking that impacts on everyday lives.