Teach­ers Cor­ner: ma­te­r­ial col­lec­tions we rec­om­mend

by Christoph

We at STC are happy to take care of the in­ter­ests of teach­ers. We most of­ten do this by choos­ing and treat­ing top­ics in our ar­ti­cles in a way that is suit­able for teach­ing (check our cat­e­gory "Teach­ers Cor­ner".) To­day we would like to draw the at­ten­tion of the teach­ers among you to col­lec­tions of ma­te­ri­als that can help you plan and con­duct your mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy classes.

The Mi­cro­bial Sci­ences Ini­tia­tive (MSI) at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity has a cu­rated data­base, a "repos­i­tory for mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy ac­tiv­i­ties from around the web. Made for teach­ers, par­ents, or stu­dents interes­ted in learn­ing mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, the ever-grow­ing data­base of more than 50 items in­cludes sev­eral types of re­sources (on­line games, hands on ac­tiv­i­ties, read­ings, and les­son plans) that span many top­ics in mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy − dis­ease, mi­cro­bio­mes, sym­bio­sis, en­vi­ron­men­tal mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, viruses and more." One of my fa­vorites is the course (with les­son plan) for 'What Food Does Yeast Like Best?' by ASM.

hhmi|BioInteractive is a fully search­able and well struc­tured col­lec­tion of great teach­ing ma­te­r­ial with an em­pha­sis on in­ter­ac­tive on­line learn­ing. They say: "Our sto­ries an­chor a va­ri­ety of class­room re­sources based on peer-re­viewed sci­ence. From data-rich ac­tiv­i­ties and case stud­ies to high-qual­ity videos and in­ter­ac­tive me­dia, our re­sources are de­signed to con­nect stu­dents to big ideas in bi­ol­ogy, pro­mote en­gage­ment with sci­ence prac­tices, and in­still awe and won­der about the liv­ing world." You think of set­ting up your own Wino­grad­sky col­umn in the class­room? First check their 'Wino­grad­sky Col­umn: Mi­cro­bial Ecol­ogy in a Bot­tle'!

Girl look­ing through her fold­scope. Source. Fron­ti­spie­ce: mak­ing of the lens for a 'Leeuwen­hoek mi­cro­scope'. Source

What­ever the cur­ric­ula dic­tate for teach­ing mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, with­out al­low­ing stu­dents to gain their own prac­ti­cal ex­perience it is half the fun for both stu­dents and teach­ers. One of these ex­pe­ri­ences is to ob­serve the small things "live", or as we say in sci­ence, "in vivo". Not all schools are equipped with mi­cro­scopes, but for­tu­nately there are full‑fledged, af­ford­able so­lu­tions. And so­lu­tions that en­gage stu­dents in mak­ing their mi­cro­scopes them­selves! One is mak­ing their own 'Leeuwen­hoek mi­cro­scope' from scratch. Pat Keel­ing wrote about this here in STC and pro­vides a con­struc­tion and op­er­at­ing man­ual via his websi­te (he also has a YouTube video.) An­other fully func­tional mi­cro­scope is, since sev­eral years, the fan­tas­tic 'fold­scope' from the Prakasch lab (@TeamFold­scope) at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, avail­able here. There is also a lively Twit­ter hash­tag, #fold­scope, where peo­ple from around the world ex­change their ob­ser­va­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences.

I can't con­clude this short ex­cur­sion into avail­able teach­ing ma­te­ri­als with­out high­light­ing 'Skype a Sci­en­tist' (@SkypeScientist). "We want to give stu­dents the op­por­tu­nity to get to know a real scien­tist and get the an­swers to their ques­tions straight from the source," and they're re­ally good at that as I've learned from the re­ac­tions of stu­dents, teach­ers and the par­tic­i­pat­ing sci­en­tists.