Learning Tools
Online Tools
Double checking your work ain't cheating. I encourage you all to use the tools available to you.
The Integrated DNA Technology website has lots of tools. You will be prompted to sign up before you can use these tools. It is worth it though. You can just put NA into any text box that doesn't apply to you.
The above dilution calculator tool will let you double check units conversion.
This tool will calculate the GC% of your entered DNA oligo, create complimentary sequences, and calculates the melting temperature. In addition it will show you potential DNA hairpins (how said DNA oligo might stick to itself). This is a must-have tool for PCR designing.
Iamge J
Favorite Science Websites
Here are some of my favorite science websites, good for review or self-directed exploration.
Kahoot: Create a game and have students interactively compete
Phenomenon - Great website with pre-selected phenomena to support every NGSS standard
Websites: Science Friday Articles and Videos
Kahn Academy
Sphero: Robot coding app
Scratch: Block based coding app
Phet simulations - really cool, interactive biology, chemistry, and physics simulations.
Brain POP (http://www.brainpop.com/)
YouTube channels
YouTube Channels: Amoeba Sisters — Mitosis and Meiosis Comparison
Crash course biology
Crash course chemistry
Bacterial Resistance — Video of bacterial growth across several antibiotics. Portrays microevolution in action.
Salmon Resource Video — Video showing the life cycle of salmon in a pretty fun way.
Natural Selection Videos – explaining evolution and natural selection
Sweet Genetics Video — introduces the concepts behind genetics.
The Rainforest — This video is about the rainforest and brings a lot of environmental science in.
Play with this for a while and mind=blown.
This gives you an easily manipulated visual representation of a wide variety of objects from the scale of Plank length (10^-35 m) through the size of the universe (10^26m). By using the left/right arrows or the mouse wheel, you can essentially "fly" through 51 orders of magnitude. This is great for making you feel really insignificant, or a little ill when you realize how much "empty space" is really inside everything we see. You get to see a "yoctometer", compare similarly-sized objects (Mt Everest is about the size of Mars' moon Deimos), and find out how wildly varied in size all of those stars you see at night really are (150,000x size difference!). Version 2 allows you to click objects and read about them.
NeoK12 at http://www.neok12.com/
TeacherTube at http://teachertube.com/
Khan Academy at www.khanacademy.org
Discovery Education at http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/
d “Veritasium”. It is a science video blog where people interested in science can learn about new ideas in short, comprehensible video segments. These videos are nice for students, teachers, and schools because they are free, based on a range of topics, and all located on this site. (All the videos can also be found on You Tube.)
On Meiosis, Mitosis & Cell Division:
http://www.neok12.com/php/watch.php?v=zX585c67507c587d455f0767&t=Cell-Divisio
On the Carbon Cycle:
http://www.neok12.com/php/watch.php?v=zX670b656f7c786e7d674f63&t=Carbon-Cycle