Thinking of using biotechnology as a focus of upcoming middle or high school science instruction?  Use the new collection from Teachers’ Domain (see NSDL Highlights) to help construct your unit using these high quality multimedia resources. The Biotechnology collection contains valuable QuickTime videos, Flash interactives, still photos, and other resources that you can incorporate, across a range of topics. Find resources about biotech applications and concepts (cloning, DNA sequencing and extraction, DNA testing; genetic engineering, disease research) to the tools and techniques that biotechnologists use, and the career paths they’ve chosen. There’s also a lesson plan on Using Biotechnology to Detect and Treat Disease. Add additional valuable bioscience resources from the BiosciEdNet (BEN) Pathway. With disease looming in Haiti as a consequence of the January earthquake, teachers have additional take-off points for using NSDL collections and resources:

The Disease Epidemic Model virtual manipulative, from Shodor Foundation and the Computational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD)

Explore the Middle School Portal’s valuable Science Resource Guides, including Turning Points in Science: Germ Theory; What’s Making You Sick; and in the geosciences:  Plate Tectonics, and Geologic Time: Eons, Eras, and Epochs

Engineering Education Blog: Update on Earthquake in Haiti - learn from a first-hand account and discussion of engineering issues and social and political implications, as a consequence of the destruction

DLESE Science Literacy Maps and Earthquake science to the fore, both recently highlighted by NSDL, offer valuable help in teaching about earthquake science, plate tectonics, and seismology

Explore!