Category Archives: Lab Work & Internal Assessment
IB Biology StatBook 2026
Almost 15 years ago, on i-Biology, I released the first version of the IB Biology StatBook: an interactive Excel workbook to support teaching the (now defunct) Statistical Analysis unit and for data processing & presentation*. Now, with the help of Claude Design, I’ve updated and turned it into a live web-app.
The new microsite is on https://ifyouuseme.ai/i-biology/statbook under “Stats & Data” and includes:
The new microsite is on https://ifyouuseme.ai/i-biology under “Stats & Data” and includes:
- Decision-trees for choosing statistical tools.
- Interactive examples of everything IB Biologists need to do.
- Worked explanations of the various methods, including t-tests (paired and unpaired), Chi-squared tests, Mann-Whitney U tests.
- Guidance on data processing and presentation.
- Statistics glossary.
- Comparing means with bars, X-markers, error bars and population distributions.
- R² best-fit and dot-to-dot plotting.
- Curve detection and explanation of different types of curves.
- Outlier detection.
- Fixing appropriate decimal places.
Students could put their own data into this tool to see how the different approaches might work, but it won’t give them the final product. They will still need to understand and present their work appropriately. Teachers can use this to demonstrate the different forms of tests and analysis live in class.
If you use these resources, you are not using any AI: it is all handled locally in your browser.
These resources are hosted on the support site for (If You) USEME-AI: Learning for Hope & Agency in an AI World.
*it’s still live, you can get it (and the slides) here.
IBBio: Investigation Cycle
This is an attempt to capture the internal assessment descriptors (for the new guide) in a format similar to the MYP’s Experimental Cycle and Design Cycle diagrams. Click here to download a higher-quality .svg file for poster printing.
Updated Turnitin GradeMark QuickMarks
Here’s a new set of Turnitin GradeMark QuickMarks I have saved to Box.net. More IA resources on the IA pages here.
My QuickMarks – click to download
They correspond to the self-assessment codes in the rubric and checklists I use with students, and will only work if your school subscribes to the full Turnitin WriteCycle suite. Each comment has a check or cross, a title and some guidance or further description in the box. You can add your own comments individually to each as you use them in student work.
- IA Grades (Simple “6 CCC” and “5 PCP” comments in various combinations)
- Academic Honesty & Presentation
Excel Graphing Screencasts
These two videos are for my classes, made using the free screencast tool ScreenCast-O-Matic.
The first is for my IB Bio group for setting up a graph for a complex set of data, adding extra datasets, error bars and formatting. The second is a similar video for a simple Physics investigation in Grade 10.
Hopefully they are helpful as you can go back and re-watch important bits as you do the write-ups.
If anyone knows of a decent way to add best-fit curves (lines are easy) to datasets, please let me know!
By JoVE, it’s Science on video!
While searching for videos on the use of a hemocytometer, I happened upon the Journal of Visualised Experiments. Go on… have a look.
They also have a sister site here:
dnatube.com
It’s a blog/youtube site for Science only, and has some decent videos sorted into categories. I’m still trying to work out how to save or embed these videos, but it’s well worth a look. Great for introducing up-to-date Science topics in class.
i-Biology 