This activity allows students to investigate classification and create their own dichotomous key. Discussion will include classification of items in everyday life.

Students will utilize factually observed or researched information in a creative high interest-writing project.

Students will gather information and data about vaccine information. They will use this information to argue whether or not vaccinations should be mandatory, culminating in a summative assessment in the form of a debate and a reflection on the information gathered.

Undergraduate Learning Assistants have been used to facilitate group work in a variety of ways, such as in-lecture tutorials and worksheets, group work in required recitations, and group work in optional co-seminars. This page describes some of these various ways that Learning Assistants can be used to help make a course more interactive.

This gallery of online resources is from the Museum's Seminars on Science, a series of distance-learning courses designed to help educators meet the new national science standards. Video Gallery: Man Bites Shark, part of the Sharks and Rays: Myth and Reality seminar, features three videos: Man Bites Shark I, which looks at the reasons sharks are threatened by people. Man Bites Shark II, which looks at Tampa Bay and how contamination from human development is affecting sharks. Man Bites Shark III, which looks at the role of sharks as a sentinel species, alerting us early on to problems within a habitat.

Views of the National Parks can be used in the classroom in many different ways. Most simply, it can be made available for students to explore on their own. Lesson plan available: Biodiversity Right Outside – Biodiversity is the abundance and variety of life-forms (animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms) at all levels of organization (ecosystems, species, and genes). In this activity students will learn about biodiversity, the importance of biodiversity to ecosystems, and will conduct their own biodiversity study.

This site offers a virtual tour of the South Dakota Museum of Geology emphasizing the Cretaceous marine reptile collection. Numerous, high resolution photographs of mosasaurs, elasmosasaurs (plesiosaurs) and other marine fauna are presented with information and references relevant to each specimen. The tour features a 29 foot long mosasaur skeleton, a 4 foot long mosasaur skull, 10 cm long teeth, fossil mosasaur stomach contents as well as other marine fauna recovered from South Dakota. The fauna presented in this collection are good examples of the marine life that flourished in Cretaceous oceans.

The concept of water activity is important to food preservation. When water activity is less than 0.6, almost all microbes, including bacteria, molds, and yeasts, stop growing. Vegetables are usually dried even further, to water activity of 0.3 or 0.2, for quality and storage. Virtual Labs – Controlling Water Activity in Food explores a traditional method of preserving corn by drying. In this virtual laboratory, learners test water activity levels of dried corn and explore how they change under three different storage environments. The interactive animation guides users through the theory and practice of sampling a food product, using a water activity meter, and setting up replicates, to build familiarity with concepts and procedures used in real food science labs. Before beginning this lab, it may be useful to complete Virtual Labs – Understanding Water Activity.

Testing the pH of a substance (how acidic or basic it is) is a basic lab test and provides a important piece of information for natural science investigations. In food science, the pH of a substance – how acidic or basic it is – is key to how it functions in food recipes. This module introduces users to the pH scale and its uses in food science. Then, users learn how to use the pH meter, and calibrate it by measuring solutions of standard value. Virtual Labs – the pH Scale & Meter Calibration familiarizes the user with food science lab equipment and teaches standard techniques for this specific procedure. The interactive animation guides the user through theory and practice of using the pH scale and pH measurement, so they will have familiarity with the equipment and procedures when encountered in a real lab.

Moist foods – like fresh fruit or raw meat – often have high water activity and spoil quickly. But some foods that seem moist – like jam or pepperoni – don’t spoil as quickly. Why is this? All living things need water to survive. Enzymes and chemical reactions also require water. If water activity is less than 0.6, almost all microbes, including bacteria, molds, and yeasts, stop growing. This means that food can be preserved against spoilage by lowering its water activity – whether by evaporating water away or binding it up. Virtual Labs – Understanding Water Activity familiarizes the user with food science lab equipment and standard techniques for measuring water activity. The interactive animation guides the user through both theory and practice, preparing them for experiences in a real lab. Complete this lab first, then follow up with Virtual Labs – Controlling Water Activity.

Interactive online tutorial about growing urchin larvae in a lab setting. Students manipulate data and are led through a lab-based situation. There is a module on ocean acidification. Lesson plans can be downloaded from website.

The activity walks the students through the processes of Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration.

This lesson uses a matching game to build students' understanding and familiarity with different terms used in the world of resiliency planning.

The Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) is a free on-line science learning environment for students in grades 4-12. In WISE, students work on exciting inquiry projects on topics such as genetically modified foods, earthquake prediction, and the deformed frogs mystery. Students learn about and respond to contemporary scientific controversies through designing, debating, and critiquing solutions, all via the internet. Curriculum projects are complete and ready to use in the classroom. The projects are designed to meet standards and complement existing science curricula. The Teacher Area lets instructors explore new projects and grade students' work on the web, as well as to collaborate with other teachers and researchers.

This activity provides students with a first look at water tension and its role in the life of a water strider.

In this video, students learn that the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 was not the sole cause of the decline of species in the local ecosystem. Rather, an explanation is posited for why some animal populations were already in decline when the spill occurred. Many of these animals share a common food: the sand lance, a fish whose populations have shrunk with the steady rise in ocean temperature that began in the late 1970s.

In this video segment, adapted from a student video produced at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham Washington, Native American elders discuss the impact of climate change on salmon populations and the importance of restoring balance in the natural world.

This video documents the challenges that climate change presents for four specific Arctic predators: polar bears, Arctic foxes, beluga whales, and walruses.

This lesson helps grade 3 students understand the difference between Vertebrates and Invertebrates.

This learning seminar contains activities to investigate how the the properties of water are derived from the nature of the polar covalent bond. The various information pathways will allow the learner to demonstrate how the properties of water affect living organisms that have evolved on earth.StandardsBIO.A.2.1.1 Describe the unique properties of water and how these properties support life on Earth (e.g., freezing point, high specific heat, cohesion).