Category Archives: Free Resources
NOAA Environmental Visualisation Library
Education Resources, Animations, Videos and Satellite Images
Awesome. NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) has revamped its Environmental visualisation libray – bringing new educational materials, visualisations, animations and resources to educators and the public. See the images of the 2008 hurricane season, animations of the ocean damage caused by humans or check out their library of satellite images.
They also have a YouTube channel where you can view and download some of their video resources. In relation to our upcoming Earth Day theme of “Reefs and Oceans“, here’s a clip about the effects of coral bleaching:
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Check out the NOAA image galleries too...
The Transport System (Core and HL-FHP)
The Transport System (Core)
Click4Biology page here.
And loads of useful links from North Harris College.
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Higher Level Students:
Download here: transport-system.ppt
And here’s the Click4Biology link
Medmovie.com has a large collection of animations which are great for this unit. We can’t link to them directly, but it’s worth having a look around.
The Cardiac Cycle:
Hyper Heart animation and graphs from the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Biointeractive from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Control of the Heart Beat:
A few good links to try from Washburn Rural High School
And don’t forget the Medmovie resource…
Atherosclerosis and Coronary Heart Disease:
Medmovie has good animations for atherosclerosis, heart attacks and heart bypass surgery. There aren’t many that are better…
Production of Tissue Fluid and Lymph:
Hydrostatic and osmotic pressure (fluid exchange) from McGraw Hill
Capillary exchange from coolschool.ca (they have other good resources, too)
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Bonus features:
For a good (tricky) prac, here’s a virtual EKG package from skillstat.com
And here’s a decent heart structure tutorial from Gateway Community College
And why not have a go at open heart surgery from abc.net.
Bio-Alive: a huge resource of animations and videos
Bio-Alive Biology and Life Sciences has a massive set of links to online tutorials, videos, animations, interactives, lectures and games. Huge. Loads.
One of the highlights has to be the video archive of surgical operations!
Follow these links for IB topic help:
Cells: animations – tutorials – virtual labs – lectures
Chemistry of Life: animations – tutorials – lectures
Genetics: animations – tutorials – virtual labs – lectures
Evolution: animations – tutorials – virtual labs – lectures
Or just visit their page for masses of links.
Foldit – help science by playing a game
Foldit is ridiculously addictive. 
It is a protein-folding game/simulation, designed and produced collaboratively between the University of Washington’s Computer Science and Engineering and Biochemistry departments. There is a great introduction to the roles of proteins in metabolism and disease, as well as protein folding, on their about page.
Apart from the great software and in-game tutorials in protein structures, players at the highest level may be contributing to medicine! The University and associated labs are setting problems of protein folding for players to solve – each one an important molecule in its own right and some even the key to curing some diseases.
There is a great article about the game on RichardDawkins.net: ‘Computer game’s high score could earn the Nobel prize in medicine.’ There’s even a classic quote from co-developer Prof. David Baker:
“I imagine that there’s a 12-year-old in Indonesia who can see all this in their head.”
Too right. Let’s represent for Indonesia!
Here’s a quick clip of the game in action at a high level:
Download the game here and get playing!
Chemical Elements and Water
Here is the class presentation:
You can click on the shadowed images in the presentation to be taken to the animations and videos.
Interactive Concepts in Biochemistry
Found this useful source on North Harris College’s linklist. 
Wiley.com have produced this online resource for Biochemistry and the Chemistry of Life, and it contains a whole load of interactives and animations.
It is an ideal resource for: photosynthesis, respiration, DNA replication, transcription, translation, cell structure, enzymes and protein synthesis.
The Habitable Planet
This is a great collection of multimedia Science resources, including lectures, notes, videos and interactives.
Get on and have a go!
It is produced by Learner.org, a huge and excellent resource for all Science topics (and other subjects, too).
Microdocs: Stanford’s reef sustainability documentaries
Stanford’s Microdocs project is a well-presented set of video and pdf resources for learning about sustainability and the coral reef ecosystem. Each video is a few minutes long and accompanied by a short article or links to useful sources.
It’s divided into useful topics and easy to navigate (and looks good, too).
And while we’re on the theme of the oceans (again) there’s a brilliant student activity resource centre at the UCLA’s OceanGlobe centre. Everything you could ever need to study marine science.
Sumanas – multimedia science resources
Sumanas, inc. has a good selection of high-quality animations and interactives.
Some highlights include their pages on Statistics and some excellent resources in the general biology page.
NOVA Life Science Resources
NOVA from pbs.org (Public Broadcasting Services) has a great library of animations and interactives on their site.
Topics include Evolution, Classification, Genetics, Ecology and Microbiology.
Many of the interactives can be saved using the downloader on Firefox.
i-Biology 
