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Educational Outreach in the Vision lab. What is “educational outreach”?. Educational outreach... ...supports formal or classroom-based education ...supports informal education outside the classroom ...increases understanding and appreciation of science
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What is “educational outreach”? Educational outreach... • ...supports formal or classroom-based education • ...supports informal education outside the classroom • ...increases understanding and appreciation of science • ...increases the involvement in science
Educational Outreach in our lab • Genomics Media Book • DESTINY Bus Module
Genomics MediaBook • interactive multimedia environment that contains realistic 3D Flash animations, bioinformatics tools, video and audio files, and an electronic reference almanac • can be a stand-alone content delivery system or a way to supplement science courses that cover genomic related materials. • primary audiences: science instructors and students in upper division natural science courses with knowledge of genetics. • collaboration of • Institute for Science Learning, UNC • Malcolm Campbell, Davidson College, NC • Center Line Productions, Raleigh, NC
Genomics MediaBook: 3 themes, 7 topics pairwise sequence alignment, multiple sequence alignment, phylogenetic reconstruction BLAST genome annotation ...
Sequence Analysis topic: content • pairwise sequence alignment • EVOLUTION • introduction • global vs. local • scoring matrices • dynamic programming • BLAST • multiple sequence alignment • EVOLUTION, • DISEASE • introduction • why DP won’t work • progressive methods • iterative methods • phylogenetic reconstruction • EVOLUTION, • DISEASE • introduction • anatomy of a phylogeny • distance-based, • character-based • methods • NJ example • MP and ML (overview) • bootstrap
GMB: opportunities and challenges • great opportunity to be involved in the development of a new kind of textbook! • templates for different stages have yet to be worked out. • animations are not a natural way of thinking about lecture material for us - yet. • we have to write out the narration for the book.
DESTINY PMABS (Partnership for Minority Advancement in the Biomolecular Sciences): DESTINY promotes equity of access to quality science learning opportunities in order to increase interest, ensure understanding, and demonstrate the relevance of science to all students' lives.
Typical DESTINY module • Pre-lab (in class) activities to set up a story/question and to cover background necessary to carry out the wet-lab • Wet-lab (aboard DESTINY) discovery/answer: protein or gel electrophoresis • Post-lab (in class) discuss wet-lab, optional follow-up topics
The basis for our DESTINY module: • In 1905 Constantin Mereschkowsky was the first to argue that chloroplasts are (derived from) reduced cyanobacteria. • His errors (that students are going to find and correct) • he missed the dichotomy of life into prokaryotes and eukaryotes; he inferred that life arose twice independently • he did not recognize that mitochondria also are descendants of endosymbiotic bacteria • he thought that the different colored plastids of different algal groups arose from different free-living cyanobacteria
Our DESTINY module • Pre-lab students will learn about an “almost correct” hypothesis of endosymbiosis from 1905 and will come up with a strategy to test this hypothesis using 2004 tools • Computer-lab students will do sequence alignment and phylogeny reconstruction of mitochondrial, chloroplast, nuclear, and bacterial sequences to confirm mitochondrial and plastid endosymbiosis • Post-lab discuss wet-lab, optional follow-up topics
Our DESTINY module: post-lab • some ideas: • primary vs. secondary endosymbiosis • organellar gene loss and gene transfer to the nucleus • origin of the nucleus • more on phylogenetic reconstruction • …
DESTINY: opportunities and challenges • DESTINY is great for high school kids who wouldn’t be able to use new technology otherwise • this will be a module for high school students!