Author Archives: Stephen
Ecosia – the search engine that helps plant trees
Thanks to David Faure for pointing this out.
Have a go at Ecosia, a search engine that donates 80% of its profits to reforestation projects in Brazil. Find out more about how this work on this page, and give it a go!
Try Ecosia now. You can add it as a Chrome extension, too.
Surviving the Peace: Mines Advisory Group
We support the Mines Advisory Group
As global tensions appear to heighten, it is is easy to get sucked into side-taking on facebook, twitter or other media, yet this is rarely helpful. There is nothing to be gained by sharing yet another horrific photo or vitriolic screed to elicit comments from your followers. As compassionate, educated global citizens we should look instead for ways to support those who are making a positive difference.
Here’s my example.
Mines Advisory Group (MAG) started in a caravan in my hometown of Cockermouth in the UK, and has blossomed over the last two decades into a major worldwide organisation dedicated to making war-torn areas safer by surveying and removing landmines and unexploded ordnance. They were co-recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for their work on the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and are well-deserving of all the funds we can raise.
Check out their 23-minute film, “Surviving the Peace“, which focuses on Laos and outlines how they work and the lasting impacts their work has on the lives of survivors of war. If you want to support them, please make a donation via my Biology4Good page for MAG, on JustGiving.
And here is a more recent video on “Surviving the Peace: Angola“:
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A challenge to i-Biology users
Use your online influence to share links to organisations that focus on protecting our environment or alleviating suffering. I have eight examples on my Biology4Good fundraising page, and you might want to do something similar. Tell the world why you care about their cause and how they’re making a difference. Maybe even work it into a CAS project.
Teaching our Sons not to rape: SexEd & #YesAllWomen
This is re-blogged from my personal reflections site, but it is an important current issue and might be of interest.
This is a brief reflection on a work in progress, but health education in school is very important to me. It is a brief reflection on a project to update and refine a Sex Ed sequence, bringing in a stronger element of values education, sexuality and attitudes. It aims to move away from the traditional ‘plumbing and don’t get pregnant or raped’ approach to a more powerful and relevant ‘plumbing, make good decisions and be a good person’ approach.
Background
From @feministabulous on Twitter.
Towards the end of the year we had the opportunity to review and teach a G9 Sex Ed class, standing separate from the regular MYP PHE class and with a different staffing allocation. It comes at a time when the school is working out how to re-distribute health topics into PE, to make PHE, yet retain the balance of content work and physical activity. Sexuality education is…
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Summer Learning
Summer holidays are here!
That means travel, rest, play, sun, sand, surf… and significant learning loss.
Here are some suggestions for a productive summer.
With eight weeks off, there’s a lot you can do to make next year more successful.
1. Unbroken rest.
Block out at least two full weeks with no school work. Let your mind wander, your health recover and your sleep be deep. Reset your balance, get active and maybe even try something new – and non-academic. You will feel better and be better able to focus on the challenges of next year. If you try to do a little work each day, it will always be in the back of your mind, causing stress.
2. Focused Extended Essay work
The Extended Essay is supposed to take around 40 hours of effort. That’s one full Monday-Friday working week. Set aside some time, with peace and the resources you need, to write the best draft you can. If your EE is causing you stress, get it done sooner in the break – you will be better able to enjoy the rest of your vacation.
3. Review this year’s learning
Once you have rested and recovered, set aside a full day or two to focus on Biology. Go through your notes, work on vocabulary, make connections across topics, practice questions from the book, re-read the chapters or presentations, watch (or re-watch) the CrashCourse videos, use the sortable syllabus to practice the assessment statements, practice drawing, labeling and annotating. There is a strong positive impact of spaced practice on learning, so taking the time to review will help make your foundation stronger for next year.
4. Read about science for fun
Science is far more than the list of assessment statements we study in class. It is a fast-moving pursuit of knowledge that connects ideas from around the world and across the disciplines. And there is a lot written about science every week. Dip into the science news, read longer articles or pick up a science book. You’ll enjoy it and it will help you make more connections.
As you read science, think about the following questions:
- How does this connect to what I already know?
- What vocabulary is important in this text? How much is known or unknown to me?
- What are the implications of this information for science or the wider world?
- What Theory of Knowledge questions does this connect to? What questions does it raise?
Some suggestions for summer reading:
- National Geographic’s Phenomena salon, with blogs by Ed Yong, Virginia Hughes, Carl Zimmer, Nadia Drake and Brian Switek. These are all excellent writers, bringing research to life in informative, current, mid-length articles. Ed Yong even posts a weekly ‘missing links’ collection of loads of collected articles, news items and funny bits from around the internet.
- Dip into the #IBBio stream on Twitter once in a while – teachers are posting links, resources and articles there all the time.
- TED’s Science stream has stacks of great talks that connect to our course.
- You can also hear lots of useful podcasts: The Guardian Science Weekly, Naked Scientists, Science Magazine Podcast, RadioLab and lots more listed at PopSci.com.
- For some great books you might want to check out Adam Rutherford’s Creation, Rebecca Skloot’s brilliant The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science and Bad Pharma, Richard Dawkins’s Selfish Gene, or The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing for a great compendium of lots of writers.
Have a great summer.
And keep that brain Fresh…
PCR Song: Class Project & TED Ed Lesson
This song by BioRad is a funny discussion starter on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and biotechnology. For a full lesson plan, with editable slides for students and a complete TED Ed lesson (with quiz), visit the full page.
Click to go to the TED-Ed lesson on PCR.
Review Vocab Quizzes with Quizlet
In this task we ‘crowd-sourced’ definitions and descriptions for a lot of the (lot of) vocabulary we have learned this year. This is to reinforce that Biology is as much a language course as a science course, and that everything is connected.
- Create a google spreadsheet with tabs numbered by subtopics covered
- Assign groups of topics to groups of students, with the simple task:
- First column, keyword, correctly spelled
- Second column: definition (exactly from subject guide if it exists) or clear description
- After groups finish, peer-edit
- Does it make sense? Are there any errors?
- It the definition clear in the ‘wider sense’ of the course?
- Adapt definitions with clarifications, or starters such as ‘process’, ‘structure’, ‘hormone’ etc
In our spreadsheet, we identified 312 terms (and growing) from this year.
Click to start a Quizlet set
In between sessions:
- Check and edit as much as needed/possible
- Import vocab into quizlet to create the set
- Very easy: select columns and paste into the right-hand field
- Make sure ‘tab’ is set, top-left
- Hit ‘import’ if it looks right
- Create quizzes/activities
- Share quizlet codes and spreadsheet URL with students
- Get reviewing!
During classes:
- Students can review using the Quizlet activities
- Students might use the vocab list to make sure they are meeting markscheme requirements for target language – are they giving complete and correct answers?
- Students can use the vocab as a foundation for concept-maps, model responses etc.
Example (sadly Quizlet doesn’t embed to WordPress.com)
- MrT’s class, Year 1 vocab (student definitions)
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If you have any creative – and effective – review methods, let us know in the comments or on Twitter!
Better Living Through Chemistry: Student Science Writers
In this compressed semester of Grade 9 MYP Chemistry, I had students do one full-length One World piece, written for a wider online audience. We had done formative One World work earlier in the semester, and the process of this article took a good few weeks, with drafting on GoogleDocs.
Brief: write a 1,200-1,500 word article for an online audience on the prompt “Better living through Chemistry: Chemical solutions to Global Issues.”
Assessment: One World and Communication in Science
Process: Topics proposed and drafted through GoogleDocs, with students seeking feedback on writing through highlighting and comments in the GoogleDocs. In the final sessions they put the articles together in WordPress and gave peer-feedback for quality of presentation, flow and message. We aimed to use images found through CreativeCommons Search and through Getty’s free Images(though the embed widget went squiffy on some of their wordpress editors).
Teacher note: this kind of task is a great way to realise that we are all language teachers. Managing workflow through GoogleDocs/Hapara makes commenting on drafts easier, though students need to keep their work there in order to show progression. The worflow and product are similar to the Grade 10 Environmental Science task, though with more scaffolding along the way.
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Some highlights (with a range of scores) are posted below. Please click-through, read them and leave some encouraging comments!
- Access to clean water (and the Lifesaver Bottle) proved popular topics, with some great pieces by Jocelle, Joanne, Lisa, Kayla,
- Arushi explores the use of iodine tablets in the treatment of dirty water, and Omar looks at a nano-tech teabag.
- Lily-Rose outlines how oral rehydration therapy saves lives (and money), and so does Taimu.
- Plastic trash was also a popular issue. Fred writes about biodegradable plastics here, and Ryo describes the plastic to oil machine, as does Ben.
- Juhaku finds out more about hyperthermia as a way to potentially improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy
- Shina looks at how cancer diagnosis uses radioisotopes
- Kaiki describes biofuels as an alternative to gas or oil.
- Takeharu writes about an intriguing use of nano-scale crystals – to coat and protect vaccines for transport
- Masaki outlines the potential uses of carbon nanotubes
- Sheila describes how NSAIDS are used as anti-inflammatory painkillers
- Jonathan describes how sodium nitrite is used in food preservatives.
Exploring Environments: Science Writers
Building on last year’s Exploring Environments units (G10 Environmental Science), in which students formed groups and designed their own units of inquiry, we have once again taken on the science-writing challenge.
Brief: write a 1,200-1,500 word article for an online audience highlighting a case study connected to your unit’s central ideas. The articles should be aimed at peers and smarter, and should include properly-used media and video where appropriate.
Assessment: One World and Communication in Science
Process: Topics proposed and drafted through GoogleDocs, with students seeking feedback on writing through highlighting and comments in the GoogleDocs. In the final sessions they put the articles together in WordPress and gave peer-feedback for quality of presentation, flow and message. We aimed to use images found through CreativeCommons Search and through Getty’s free Images (though the embed widget went squiffy on some of their wordpress editors).
Teacher note: this kind of task is a great way to realise that we are all language teachers. Managing workflow through GoogleDocs/Hapara makes commenting on drafts easier, though students need to keep their work there in order to show progression.
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Some highlights (with a range of scores) are posted below. Please click-through, read them and leave some encouraging comments!
- Bottom-trawling: destroying centuries of growth, by Polina
- Nozomi asks “Should we eat bugs?“
- “The ocean is turning to blue vinegar,” according to Jay
- Saumil explores George Monbiot’s articles on “how wolves change rivers” and how rewilding might help us return nature to some semblance of its former glory.
- Nyeong-Min asks us to “protect our UV protector“
- Seung-Cheol tells a bee story, exploring colony collapse disorder
- Luke coughs his way through the Beijing air pollution and places our demand for cheap goods at the root
- Lucas gives an explainer of PM2.5 pollution and thinks about what we can do about it.
- Andy gets concerned about the effect of CO2 on our beach time
- Koh asks if fish farming is a viable alternative to overfishing
BioNinja: App & Website
Click to visit BioNinja
BioNinja is website and app for review in IB Biology that you might find useful. It has some summary notes, tutorials and songs and quizzes on the free app.
For other review resources for the IBBio exams:
- This site (i-Biology.net) has presentations, links and review sheets.
- Click4Biology.info has good summary notes, with depth
i-Biology 