VIDEO, NOTES: "DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA"

Students, in this blog post you will find many important resources and updates to the syllabus.  In particular....Your last regular Unit Test is Friday, May 23rd.   There will be an After-School Study Session beginning at 4:00 and going until 5:30 on the prior date, Thursday, May 22nd.

To help prepare for that Test, here is the latest set of  Lecture Notes, and here is the PDF file of the Lecture Guide based upon the notes.   The previous sections of notes to be covered appears here, and here.

Perhaps most importantly, here is the link to the previous blog post describing your 600-point final semester project, which consists of writing multiple drafts of a guided essay.   THE FIRST DRAFT IS DUE MONDAY, MAY 19th!!!

Finally, the title of the latest group of notes, incidentally, is taken from the Daniel Dennett book which also inspired a two-hour episode of the NOVA 'Evolution' series.    This episoded is being shown in class in its entirety over the course of several lessons. 

To help students master this material,   the entire video has been made available through this YouTube channel, broken into 11 segments, shown below:

(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.

SEMESTER PROJECT: "EVOLUTION, CREATION, AND ALL THAT JAZZ"

Today, students in Mr. Hatfield's Biology classes will receive instructions on their final Semester Project, which involves writing a 1,000-word essay in a series of drafts from a topic chosen by students related to the material in Chapters 15 and 16 of the text:

The essay has requirements in terms of format, bibliography and citations, sources and student integrity.   Mr. Hatfield discusses those requirements, at length, in the following video excerpt:




 Students who have additional questions about this assignment should refer to the syllabus and discuss their concerns with the instructor as soon as possible!

VIDEO: "EXTINCTION!"

Tuesday's class featured excerpts from 'Extinction!', which is Episode 3 from NOVA's 'Evolution' series (2001).

The video begins with paleontologist Peter Ward hunting for Permian fossils in South Africa's Karoo Desert, and relates ecological pyramids (which are like a 'house of cards') to mass extinctions, which are believed to be rare but important events in the history of life.

It then follows the work of American Museum of Natural History researcher Michael Novacek in building the fossil record of small, shrew-like mammals from the Mesozoic, representative of the lineage that will survive the next mass extinction (the K/T event), which will claim the dinosaurs.

It concludes with an examination of the role of human activity in accelerating the rate of extinction, with important attention to conservationists like Alan Rabinowitz. I encourage students to watch the video in its entirety for themselves if there are points that they don't get in class. We simply do not have enough class time to review this, but I know many students will want to see the whole story again, either by going to Google Video or watching it here:

SYLLABUS: EVOLUTION AND NATURAL SELECTION

Here is the Syllabus for Unit 9, which introduces the powerful ideas of evolutionary biology.

This Unit began prior to Spring Break, which is reflected in the Syllabus.   However, students should note that the 50-point assignment "Lord of the Ants" is not reflected on this handout, as it was assigned prior to Spring Break.   Students who missed this can still watch the video online and use it to define terms and answer questions based on the video.

The image on the syllabus here is a bit larger than the blog could show.   A reader can click on the image to make it easier to read, or download it if they need to print it out.

An exciting new PBS program that bears significantly on the above topic, "Your Inner Fish", represents some of the best evidence from comparative anatomy and the fossil record pointing to common descent.   Both students and parents may enjoy watching these videos online while they available:

VIDEO: "LORD OF THE ANTS"

Students have received an assignment in class, called "Lord of the Ants: The Boy Naturalist."   This is a reading, available on-line here, and adapted from E.O. Wilson's autobiographical memoir Naturalist, which details his career as a specialist in ants, activist for preserving biodiversity and founder of the discipline of sociobiology.   The reading is based on a story from Wilson's boyhood, but also has questions that relate to a PBS Nova video chronicling Wilson's career of scientific achievement, called "Lord of the Ants."

Students can watch that video here:

Edward Osborne Wilson is truly one of the giants of biology.  Every student should learn more about him.

POWER POINT: MUTATIONS!

Here's a link to our recent notes on 'Mutation!'

A PDF of the Lecture Guide based upon the Power Point is available here.

The video viewed in class, and thus the handout based on it, can be viewed on-line here:



There is an entire PBS-sponsored web site to accompany this program. It's truly excellent, but at two hours long, I can not show the entire program within a regular class.

I can, however, assign a segment of it along with Section 14.3 of our text to help students understand the material and complete the worksheet. So, read that section, watch video segments 4-8 and complete your work, students!

VIDEO: BODY STORY "OUT OF CONTROL"

Students were shown the above 22-minute video segment during class on Tuesday, Feb. 25th.  

The video describes some of the events that take place in the development of a human infant's brain.   There was a worksheet based on this video, collected on the same day in class.   However, because there was a substitute, there may have been some confusion on what the expectation was.  And, of course, some students may not have been present during Tuesday's class.

So, to make sure that every student has an opportunity to complete the assignment and earn points in Mr. Hatfield's Biology classes, I am making both the worksheet and the video available through the class blog.   First, here is the video, broken into a pair of segments:







Students who are interested in watching other videos in this series can find them on the following YouTube channel: 

https://www.youtube.com/user/flixwest?feature=watch



Finally, for those who need a copy of the worksheet, it is available HERE.