Welcome to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Educational Resource Center.
March 4, 2010 |
Middle and high school teachers can now access a full digital library of biotechnology resources free of charge on TeachersDomain.org, thanks to a partnership announced in January by the WGBH Educational Foundation.
The portal is made possible by the Amgen Foundation and is currently accessed by over 450,000 teachers and students across more than 74 percent of public schools grades K-12 in the United States, according to WBGH.
Among the features available to educators are lesson plans on using biotechnology to detect and treat disease as well as concepts like DNA sequencing and engineering biofuels. The resources are primarily interactive, Flash-based slideshows and videos in both Flash and QuickTime formats.
Daniella Quiñones, coordinator of the WGBH Education Foundation, said the ultimate goal of the collection is to “deepen the teaching and learning of the biotech industry for both teachers and students in the classroom.”
“Right now there’s a huge void for resources that can supplement the existing curriculum or even create a new one,” she said.
According to the website, Teachers’ Domain is an “online library of more than 1,000 free media resources from the best in public television.”
The idea of the collection came about when a representative from Amgen met with Howard Lurie, the director of professional development at Teachers' Domain, at a conference for the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA).
Quiñones said the idea began with putting together a plan to submit a proposal not just for the media resources but also to tap into professional resources and improve teaching & learning of biotech through channels like one-day workshops across the country and an online biotech graduate course.
Lurie said Amgen was searching for a channel through which it could provide ongoing professional development services to teachers in the biotech field
“Amgen was particularly interested in how digital media could be integrated into biology and biotechnology classrooms as a means to deepen student understanding of core concepts as well as showcase real-life stories of biotechnology scientists and technicians,” he said.
According to Lurie, Amgen has contributed to the collection by contributing funding and through its “invaluable assistance in identifying the career pathways needs of the biotech industry” as it pertains to the next generation of industry professionals. Amgen will also provide scientists to attend seven face-to-face teacher workshops in the spring.
An example of the effort on a local level is the free, one-day teacher workshop on Saturday, March 27 at Watertown High School in Watertown, Mass., which Lurie said he plans to attend.
Quiñones said the reception the collection has garnered from teachers has been encouraging.
“Overall, the resources have been well received by community teachers,” Quiñones said. “There has been huge interest in one-day teachers’ workshops from across the country, from California to Massachusetts and even Puerto Rico.”
Melinda Joncas, the academy supervisor for the biotech department at the Greater Lawrence Technical School in Lawrence, said she appreciates having the resources easily accessible.
“The availability of this biotechnology collection provides my students and me with the tools to investigate what can be a very unfamiliar subject,” she said. “These resources will be an invaluable roadmap to design and teach new lessons, courses or supplement a full program.”
An online teachers’ development course designed by WGBH is currently underway, which would use the resources at Teachers’ Domain as the basis for the workshop.
The Massachusetts branch of Teachers’ Domain was established last October, providing free access to a digital library completely aligned with the state’s public school curriculum. In the coming months, the domain anticipates new features being rolled out to facilitate the role of media in classroom.
For more information on the site please go to www.TeachersDomain.org or contact Daniella Quiñones at daniella.quinones@wgbh.org.
We invite Schools in the MassBioEd Network to send us articles showing their students engaged in hands-on lab experiments or other interactive problem-solving programs.
Send the links to these articles to Suzanne Grillo. We will make every effort to include them in this section of our website.
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