With school opening for the 2012/2013 academic year, BLOSSOMS is inviting high school teachers to submit lessons in Mathematics, Science or Engineering that they believe would make excellent video lessons. Submissions are due by Monday, December 3rd, 2012, and winners will be announced by Monday, February 4thth, 2013. Winning teachers will travel to MIT with all expenses paid to film their new BLOSSOMS lessons. For contest details, read more.
 MIT BLOSSOMS is very pleased to announce the addition to its video library of three new lessons created by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The first lesson in this series, “From Teenage to Old Age: How Cancer Develops over Time”, focuses on how cancer is caused by mutations that accumulate over time in cells’ DNA, how the genes mutated in cancer are involved in normal cell growth & division, and how different types of mutations affect the functions of these genes. The second lesson, “Making It Personal: Using DNA to Tailor Cancer Treatments”, explores how laboratory research can be used to determine which mutations have occurred in the DNA of the cancer cells, and how these findings can impact the treatments chosen for different cancer patients. The third lesson, “How Scientific Teams Develop New Anti-Cancer Drugs”, introduces students to the different kinds of scientists—biologists, chemists, cancer doctors—all working together in the various stages of drug discovery. BLOSSOMS is extremely grateful to Dr. Megan Rokop of the Broad Institute for her role in overseeing the development of these lessons.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Master Education Group is an educational collaborative between several scientists from research universities across the country interested in curriculum development and design in the biological sciences. As a group, these scientists are committed to developing and implementing exciting new strategies and techniques to teach biology at the university level. Many of these can be used at the high school level. In particular, check out their Student-Centered Teaching Tools here.
|
