EDCI 5065 Week 2 Resources (Biology)

1.) Source 1

I choose this online website because it provides a framework for how high school biology classes should be structured. I feel that as a beginning biology teacher it is especially important to understand what students should get out of their class and equally as important for teachers to understand how to meet these needs. The website does not provide a curriculum to follow, but rather touches upon the important tasks and goals every teacher should strive to meet in his or her classes. In addition, the article also talks about assessment to evaluate the progress of students in the sciences and standards to determine if teachers are encouraging learning and growth in their classrooms. I feel that this website is a useful resource which good teachers would use to teach because it outlines the important principles, standards, and goals of science education. While its messages cannot be directly translated into a specific classroom standard, they serve as guidelines that then enable a teacher to work towards accomplishing these standards. The information would allow students to gain competency in biology by allowing me to design classrooms that meet these goals. For instance, the article states that it is important for students to engage intelligently in public discourse and debate of important science issues. I can then shape a curriculum to meet these standards by providing students with activities which require them to debate the importance of global climate changes and how it affects their lives, in order to meet this objective.

2.) Source 2

This online website provides a multitude of hands-on teaching techniques. I believe that these activities would be a key resource for teaching biology because they provide many opportunities for students to become actively engaged in their learning. These activities provide different methods of learning, such as explaining difficult concepts through common activities, which can be directly observed, also by bringing the material to life instead of only teaching from a book. Students can visualize what is going on during complex processes in biology and learn how to demonstrate these principles. A good teacher emphasizes multiple methods of learning in the classroom. I feel that these activities indicate how good teachers teach by getting students active in their learning, allowing them to visualize the procedures, and allowing for physical learning to occur. Students would develop competency in biology by applying large concepts, which may not make sense to them at first, to everyday phenomena that occur. This would allow for more understanding of how biology plays in integral role in our everyday life.

3.) Source 3

The third resource is another online website which links to several different research articles, news articles, and videos which talk about the future of biology. Most of these links talk about what has recently been done in the field of biology or what the future of biology will be. I feel that they are extremely useful educational tools by exposing students to the future problems of the world, as well as keeping them in touch with the development in the field. I feel that good teachers would use this tool to show students how to discover problems or research in biology that would never be covered in a standard classroom. Textbooks do not have time to cover the most recent discoveries in the field of biology. It allows students to see more biology in their everyday world and allows them to ask questions about how to solve problems that are the most crucial to biology. Also, it allows for students to develop competency about how biologist and other scientists perform research, including how to design research questions, how to test these hypotheses, and how to interpret the data and communicate findings.