It’s going to get pretty quiet around here…
…find out why after the page break.
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First off, my students’ and my thoughts are with all those affected by the recent disasters in both New Zealand and Japan. We are following all stories closely and wish everyone the best possible outcome, despite such horrible circumstances.
We should also consider those in Egypt, Libya and other regions of instability. We must think ourselves fortunate compared to those whose access to education, especially the quality of education you get in international schools, is limited.
It may look like doom and gloom in the world right now, but you guys – IB students – can be the change that needs to happen. When you graduate, do something useful. Science can help build a sustainable and stable future.
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With exams looming, it is time for some real, self-directed review and study. Search the internet and you’ll find loads of ideas, but here are some specific tips for my students and others involved in IB Biology.
Practice!
1. Practice. Get the QuestionBank CDRom, past papers and practice questions from the textbooks and use them extensively.
2. Get used to writing for extended periods of time, and under timed conditions. Think ‘a mark a minute’ and you’ll be fine. If your handwriting’s rubbish, get working on it ASAP.
3. Audit your knowledge using the subject guide. Remove all the pages for topics you do not need to cover (e.g. Options that are not yours, AHL content if you are in SL), and you will find it more manageable. Then work through each one – do you feel like you could answer an exam question for each?
4. Understand the Command Terms.
5. Pay attention to the number of marks available. For the 6-8 mark questions, write at least that much, and take care of structure and logic in your answers. Lay it out clearly and don’t waffle.
Writing about exam stress
6. Practice the data questions. Can you make your own from graphs and charts in works that you have read?
7. Write about your exam stress. Ed Yong tells us why.
8. Use whiteboarding to practice diagrams, annotations, explanations and so on. Teaching others clarifies the ideas and explanations in your own mind.
9. Know your way around the calculator and practice means, standard deviations, percentage changes and calculating sizes and magnifications.
10 Sleep, eat well and keep fit. All night cramming is no good for you – if it’s not in your brain by the day before, it won’t be, so stop stressing and get to sleep. Decaffeinate yourself, get some exercise and stay healthy so that you don’t risk getting sick in the exam session. Find out more about Brain Compatible Education at Derek Pugh’s website (Derek was my predecessor at BIS).
Some more techniques my students have used:
- Making the SlideShares into tiny flashcard sets
- Mind-mapping or concept mapping
- Some online study tools here.
- Using Quia Quizzes for review (teachers with accounts, you can copy these quizes to your own account. Keep a log with this spreadhseet).
You could also record podcasts or vodcasts (like at Click4Biology).
Always think about how effective your use of time is when you are carrying out a task. Some students may spend hours copying out their notes, but to what extent does it have a positive impact on exam grades?
Good luck,
MrT
Untangling the Brain – Nature Video
Another great video from the NatureVideoChannel, posted just in time for the end of the IB Biology course for our HL students.
For more brain resources, head over to the main topic page (E5 The Human Brain).
Also check out the excellent resources from the NewScientist: The Human Brain
3D Brain App: It's Free!
PBS has a great site called The Secret Life of the Brain (with 3D animation), and there’s Slate’s special issue on The Brain.
If you have an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad, get this cool free app: 3dBrain.
Some comic relief from the mock exams…
Reward your studies with a 5-minute giggle-break.
If you really must think as you’re watching the video, can you pick out examples of innate and learned behaviour, altruism, competition, kin selection and mate selection?
BIS Students: remember there are loads of past papers on Moodle, including P1 quizzes to try through Quia: http://www.quia.com/profiles/staylor. The quizzes will grade themselves, but you need to get the question papers from Moodle or the network.
The Looming Water Crisis
Could we run out of water before we run out of oil?
World Water Day is just around the corner – March 22nd.
Powerful messages abound regarding the impending socio-political, environmental and humanitarian disaster of the global water shortage. Watching the presentation and video above you will notice some startling, terrifying statistics. As a critical thinking or data-literacy task, can you track down the sources of those statistics?
What is 'Water Stress?'
With Earth Day (April 22) coming up, and the GIN conference around the same time, there are plenty of opportunities to explore the water shortage as an issue upon which we, as learners and leaders, can take action.This would in itself be a great topic for local and global CAS, or a self-contained theme for the Group 4 Project.
Find out more about the world water crisis here:
World Water Day (March 22)- Water crisis, from TreeHugger
- World Water Council
- The Water Crisis, from Water.org
Some resources to use:
- Tracking school water use, from NSW Sustainable Schools
- Water use calculator, from NSW Sustainable Schools
- Tracking water consumption, by the Social Justice Committee
- Lesson plans, from Water.org
- World Water Day lesson plans, from teacherplanet
Using the resources above, as well as other local orgnisations, can the school develop and monitor a sustainable water plan?
Here’s a cool video, with a good soundtrack, from charity:water
Do you have any more resources and ideas for the water crisis to share? Add them in the comments below!
Deeply Dipity About Interactive Timelines
Create interactive timelines online for free with Dipity. This would be a great tool for revision of historical topics and it can be shared and embedded.
Ed Yong has a neat example on his NotExactlyRocketScience blog, of the timeline of reprogrammed (induced pluripotent) stem cell research:
Reprogrammed stem cells on Dipity
Why use this?
- It’s free, visual, quick and easy
- Images, links and videos can be inserted
- You can connect it with facebook for easy logins (like SlideShare)
- Sharing is easy, embeds are possible (though not WordPress.com, again)
What could it be used for?
- Book or topic reports, such as a timeline of Darwin’s life and work.
- Mapping any time-related topic. History of the Universe, anyone?
Of course, if you’re studying History, Economics or current affairs, it would be an ideal tool.
Optogenetics & the Brain – watch this video!
Thanks, once again, to Ed Yong for his fantastic NotExactlyRocketScience blog. This video is a must-watch for students, especially those taking HL and the Neurobiology option. Once you’ve seen it, go over to Ed’s blog and read the article “Shedding light on sex and violence in the brain“, which is a really interesting look at the balance between sex and aggression in mouse brains, using this method.
You can see why it is the winner of Nature Methods’ 2010 Method of the Year (click for lots of articles).
Although it is way ahead of the syllabus, there are links to:
- taxis
- membrane proteins, channels and ions
- depolarisation and hyperpoloarisation of nerves
- transgenics (using viruses as a vector for delivering new genes)
- transcription and translation
- regions of the brain
Embed Plus – and the Plants Talk to Us
Tay from EmbedPlus pointed me to their free tool to allow greater control over YouTube videos, so here is my first attempt at using it to annotate and take over this TED talk from Wade Davis.
EDIT – it doesn’t work properly on WordPress.com, but here is a link to the edited video (the embedded version below is the original from YouTube). It works great on GoogleSites and Moodle, though.
The second ‘chapter’ (about 11.40 in) links to a brilliant example of an amazonian shaman who makes a powerful psychoactive preparation of Ayahuasca, from a vine. Tryptamines are the active component and are similar to tryptophan (our famous amino acid/ end product inhibition example).
They act as neurotransmitters and include serotonin, which regulates mood. It is broken down by enzymes bound to the plasma membrane of cells in the digestive tract called monoamine oxidase (MAO), so can’t be taken orally. The amazing thing is the shaman uses a preparation from another plant that inhibits this enzyme, so that the potion can be ingested and is effective. This is amazing knowledge, gleaned from a totally alternative scientific method to the one we are used to, and demonstrates an advanced naturalistic intelligence.
When he asked how they knew this and were able to combine these two extracts from the thousands available, they answered “The plants talk to us.”
Can you link this to the AHL enzymes content and represent it diagrammatically?
Once you’re done flicking through, watch the whole talk. Then become an ethnobotanist and do something useful!
For more questions and TOK links, see the full post here.
Perception of Stimuli
Close your left eye and stare at the +. Move your head closer to the screen and keep staring at the +, but pay attention to the dot. What happens? Explain why.
- Explain it yourself first, then check at Serendip’s great website.
You need to know the structure of the eye to succeed! This eye structure tutorial from Sumanas might help.
The solution and loads more perception demonstrations can be found at Serendip’s playground.
Your biggest challenge is this one: “Explain the processing on visual stimuli, including edge enhancement and contra-lateral processing“.
So here are our class notes:
There are many more resources on the main page for this topic:
E2 Perception of Stimuli (including some cool links to illusions)
Here is Pawan Sinha talking about how the brain learns to see, and how we can help the children who are born blind in India. Find out more about Sinha’s work and Project Prakash at his university website (MIT).
Updated IA Self-Assessment Sheets
Tip: to print your completed rubric, first save as a pdf file- it doesn’t confuse the printers. For the same document as 4 portrait A4 pages, which can be easily copy-pasted onto your write-up, click here.
BIS Students: make sure that you use this in all stages of your experimental work, from design to the final write-up. Use it to:
- Check your work as you plan and carry out the investigation
- Self-assess your write-up as you go through the process
- Reflect on the feedback given via Moodle/Turnitin
For more IA help, click here.
The codes on the checklist correspond to those that appear on your marked work via Moodle/Turnitin. Other teachers – you can download these comments here, to be used or adapted as long as your school uses the full Turnitin WriteCycle package.
i-Biology 