Kia Ora
The Allan Wilson Centre is facilitating this blog for New Zealand Biology teachers. This is a forum where teachers can create networks, source inspiration and a place for dialogue to begin…
BioEd New Zealand
A community for New Zealand Biology Teachers
Hi, Susan here, welcome to our new blog. Please feel free to use this site to share ideas and happenings.
As a Year 2 teacher in a school undergoing ICT cluster PD (first teaching Y12 and Y13Bio), I am really happy to have found this blog, albeit completely by accident! I didn’t attend BioEd, so I’m now wondering how many other potential opportunities to connect I am missing out on. This blog has been up since March 5 with one welcome comment on it so far… There must have been a groundswell of support for it to be put in place, so use the opportunity!
BTW I came across the blog while confirming lecture info for Lisa Matisoo-Smith’s upcoming talk in the Allan Wilson Lecture Series (23 March at Hutton Theatre, Otago Museum in Dunedin). Too early in the year for my Y13s to directly link it to their anthropology unit, but its great PD for me and a fantastic intro for my students to three of the lead scientists in this field and the H. floresiensis talk in Feb was excellent.
Hi Claudine
The blog was listed on 5 March and has just been advertised in the hot off the press issue of our Centre’s newsletter, Pheno, posted out to schools at the end of last week. I hope we’ll pick up a number of commentors soon. Thanks for the nice comments about the lecture series. We will be recording both Lisa’s and Jack Harris’s talks so they will be available on the AWC website soon. But there is nothing better than being there – so here’s a plug for everyone to attend. There was standing room only when we ran the first lecture in Dunedin, Christchurch and Palmerston North.
Susan
Thank you for setting this up, Susan. I am looking forward to seeing the uploaded presentations from BioEd and refreshing my memory of a fantastic conference.
Claudine – check out the presentation from Jo Fissendon of Kaikoura High School on teaching Human Evolution with very practical overtones! (down to shooting and skinning your own rabbit with a stone tool)
There was a lot of emphasis on getting current research into the classroom foro students to work on and I am keen to see the next step here. Any ideas?
Fantastic!! It is great to have this up and running. I too am keen to get the research into class and think it may have to be a combination of techers making a lesson or activity out of the content with the help of the researchers, not sure. But i did use one of Ethels cases with my year 12 class during evolution and extended it with some ENSI stuff on whales – awesome two period sequence that finally got them working – Yay!! Jo
For those who did and those who didn’t make it to BioEd – many of the presentations from BioEd are now on the web at http://www.allanwilsoncentre.ac.nz/teachingResources/BioEdPresentations.htm.
I have had only a quick look at the conference presentations – hoping to have some holiday time to refresh my memory. Is this the place where we can ask questions about some of the primary data that was presented?
Hi Ally. Yes you are welcome to ask questions and if needed I will put you in contact with the author of the presentation you have a question about. Susan
Forgot to mention – to those who didn’t make it to the lecture series – Lisa Matisoo-Smith’s presentation is on the AWC website and Jack Harris’s will be there in about two weeks time.