A software program recommended by Recesso and Orrill for science education in this chapter of our textbook was Cells Alive!. This free online resource is easy for both teachers and students to navigate. The material presented accurate and free of obvious racial, ethnic, or cultural bias. It ties directly to many of the content goals for 10th grade biology, including investigating cells, germ theory, and body systems. The program offers many different models and simulations which could be used to engage students in a topic or allow students to see processes that are otherwise difficult to examine in a classroom. The program allows the students to watch animations, view high-resolution images from different power microscopes, and view demonstrations that compare objects of multiple scale simultaneously. All of the photographs appear to be taken with current and relevant technologies that are available to real scientists. Navigation tools encourage students to slow down, pause, speed up, or skip images and videos as necessary to meet their learning needs. The software also offers tools for assessing student understanding. The assessments provide students with instant feedback. Rather than supplying correct answers when students make mistakes, the software provides a link for students to return to the material and reexamine their answer.
The drawback to this software is that, despite these navigation tools and assessments, the tools are not in themselves interactive. In many of the sections, especially in the review of mitosis, the images stand alone with little contextual support. The students are not asked to engage in higher level thinking skills as they go through the materials. The software could be used as a review for students or a check for understanding, but to support learning, this software would have to be accompanied with teacher created activities that encourage students to really think critically and that relate to specific lesson objectives.
The link for this site is http://www.cellsalive.com/.
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This program seems to be more of a simulation. Like I would use it to preview students before they looked into a microscope. Or, students can use this program to check what they think they observed during a microscope. I also wonder if there is a way to screen shot some of the images and use them in PowerPoints or 'how to' instructions for labs. Sometimes, screen shots don't work on computer programs.
ReplyDeleteI see this program as a way to introduce labs or concepts and to check results against. Are there any analogous simulations where students can compare what they observe in the program to actual events in nature or the science classroom?
There are many virtual labs, models, and simulations for biology topics available online and in supplemental electronic textbook materials. However, this is one of the few programs I have observed which demonstrates material that can also be viewed in most classrooms with simple light microscopes. I really like your idea for introductions and lessons in which students can first use the computer to familiar with an object or process, and then observe them later in the classroom using more traditional methods. I think most biology programs right now are designed to show concepts that are too difficult, dangerous, or expensive to observe in the classroom.
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