Friday, May 10, 2013

BIOLOGY: "DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA"

Episodes from PBS's "Evolution" series have been previously featured in instruction.   The centerpiece of that series, a two-hour episode entitled "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", will be shown in class in its entirety over the course of several lessons (we are, in fact, close to completing it).   Students have been given a study guide to this video, which not only uses actors to reenact key events in Darwin's life, but provides vivid demonstrations of Darwin's ideas, and how scientists explore these ideas today.

Students will be expected to complete the study guide based on the video, which will involve writing short responses (1-2 paragraphs) to a series of prompts to specific parts of the video.   As such, they may find it necessary to review the video.  

The paragraphs generated by students will be critical to completing their final quarter project in this course, so it is vital that all students complete the study guide immediately.   The entire video is available through this YouTube channel, broken into 11 segments that roughly correspond wtih the 12 chapters in the assignment.

(For your convenience, I have embedded all 11 videos on this page, but these may not be visible on FUSD computers or on others that do not have recent versions of Java to run flash-based media.  If you are unable to open the individual videos on this post, go to the link above and watch them directly on YouTube)

Chapter 1. Prologue
Chapter 2. Common Ancestry









Chapter 3. Ecuador and the Tree of Life





Chapter 4. Natural Selection





Chapter 5. Mutation and HIV





Chapter 6. Complexity





Chapter 7. How The Eye Evolved





Chapter 8. God





Chapter 9. A Scientist Discusses Religion





Chapter 10. The Human Question





Chapter 11. Humans and The Tree of Life Chapter 12. Epilogue





Finally, here is the PBS web site that accompanies the entire series.
 
You can also watch parts of the videos there, but they are lower in resolution.

No comments: