WWW.Cell Biology Education
The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) Education Committee calls attention each quarter to several websites of educational interest to the cell biology community. The Committee does not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of the information at any of the listed sites. If you want to comment on the selections or suggest future inclusions, please send a message to [email protected]. The sites listed below were accessed on April 13, 2002.
BIOTECH ADVENTURES
http://biotech-adventure.okstate.edu/
Six Oklahoma State University (OSU) faculty members from various science and medicine departments coupled with OSU undergraduate journalism students to bring us this interesting and useful site. While searching for information on ovulation and spermatogenesis movies produced by the late Richard Blandau of the Washington University Medical School, this uniform resource locator (URL) emerged. The site has Quicktime clips of Blandau's exceptional films produced in the mid-1960s. Access to these extraordinary films of cat and rabbit ovulation events would make this a worthwhile site on its own. However, the site has numerous other illustrations and animations of other types of biological events. Teaching segments on polymerase chain reaction (PCR), sequencing, karyotyping, and black bear genetics are but a few of the resources located at this site. The URL is aggressive in its use of Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime, and Real Player media. A T-1 connection is recommended. Learning resource material found here is extensive and could be used in a variety of undergraduate courses. The navigation screens are a bit juvenile but lend an air of humor as one explores the site.
HARVEY PROJECT
http://harveyproject.org/
Robert Stephenson of Wayne State University has started a physiology project that is reminiscent of the Tree of Life project. He states, “The principal goal of the project is to build dynamic, interactive materials (such as simulations, animations and 3-D models) that will help students understand the material and find excitement in it in ways that conventional textbooks or lecture materials cannot.” He continues by saying, “This is a large-scale project to build world-class, interactive, dynamic Web materials for teaching physiology. This project follows the `open course' model and the peer-reviewed materials that are developed will be free for all nonprofit institutions to use.” Materials that are posted to the site deal primarily with the nervous system and muscle. Development activity for the site peaked in 2000, with fewer additions since then. The most important part of this ambitious project is its organization. It provides a template for how a shared theme site might be organized. If you are interested in what should be included in a large-scale teaching and learning web site, this is a good place to visit. The site also provides an extensive list of links to anatomy and physiology sites, another plus.
NEUROMUSCULAR DISEASE CENTER
http://www.neuro.wustl.edu/neuromuscular/index.html
Washington University School of Medicine's Department of Neurology provides this very interesting website. Clearly, this is a medical site that, in part, is advertising its diagnostic abilities to the medical public. However, in a skilled undergraduate lecturer's hands, the site can provide boundless resources for students who want to go beyond the usual sliding filament information found in undergraduate textbooks. For example, if one follows the path to Index: Molecular and Cellular: Dystrophin and Associated Proteins, there appears an incredible diagram of the organization of the extrajunctional muscle membrane describing the organization of 40 proteins. On the same screen, a superb diagram of the neuromuscular junction with the position of more than 20 proteins is shown. By following the path titled “structural and contractile,” one may access one of the finest reviews of myosin available. If you want to update your knowledge of muscle and perhaps develop some case study material for a class, this is a site worth investigating.
DIRECTORY OF ORGANIZATIONS
http://ericdb.uoregon.edu/directory/
The College of Education at the University of Oregon maintains a web-based Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) resource. Newly added is a Directory of Organizations in Educational Management. The site states as its purpose the following: “The online Directory of Organizations in Educational Management is designed to guide users to sources of information on management of elementary and secondary schools.” If you are trying to discover what is being done to improve K–12 education, this database can help discover those professional groups involved in that effort. You may want to back out of the directory and explore the main ERIC site—there is a world of information about various education efforts collected by this organization.
