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Cartilaginous skeleton, a couple rows of teeth, and cold, black eyes that are ever in search of prey: how can you not love sharks?! Here’s something that might chum the waters of your interest.

As you may or may not know, Discovery Channel is right now in the middle of their annual event, Shark Week. You may also enjoy finding out that Discovery Channel has an enormous amount of content about sharks on their website.

There are interactive maps, quizzes to test your shark knowledge, and just a ton of information about sharks. The only thing that’s missing is Robert Shaw reprising his role as the not-so-cuddly boat captain, Quint. –NICK YINGLING

Shark Week

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Put away your shovels and gloves and allow your students the opportunity to create a butterfly garden without getting dirty or ever leaving the classroom. Create a virtual habitat in your classroom that will attract different butterfly species such as Monarch, Red Admiral, Eastern Trailed Blue, Black Swallowtail, and Cabbage White with the website Explore Butterflies.

On this site you can add different plants to your online butterfly garden such as Hairy Angeliea, Queen Anne’s Lace, Bog-hemp, Stinging Nettle, Hairy Bush-clover, Common milkweed, bee-balm, joe-pye weed, butterfly bush, black mustard, and shade trees. As you add different plants the species of butterflies that are attracted to that habitat will appear on the screen. The types and amounts of butterflies that appear in your habitat will depend on what you plant in it. You have two minutes to try to attract as many of the different species as you can. This is a great way for your students to see that it is important (and sometimes difficult) to have just the right balance in a habitat for animals to survive in it.

In addition to creating a butterfly habitat the site also offers interactive activities that will test your students’ knowledge of butterflies. Students answer questions on two different levels to earn butterfly badges. In the Field Study Section they’re  asked to identify the different parts of a butterfly and what they are used for. Under the Butterflies & Climate Change section they can see how global warming affects the butterfly populations in areas. This is a great way to asses prior knowledge, spark interest before a unit study, or asses how much your students have learned after a study on butterflies. -MONIQUE ST.LOUIS

Explore Butterflies

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I can always tell when a bug has made its way into my classroom. There are a few screams and students jumping on desk to flee from the pest. But not to fear, I always have that one brave student that will just step on it and then life goes back to normal. However, this little classroom interruption is a great teachable moment to engage your students in real world science discovery. How you ask? Well who better to go to then Orkin for the answers?

Orkin has a great website to engage students in lessons around the different pest they encounter in their school and home. Junior Pest Investigators consist of great teacher lessons based on National Science Standards and Best Teaching Practice Instruction Strategies for grades K-6.

The lessons cover topics that range from different types of bugs we encounter in our environment to why they are found in certain places. The lessons focus on the environments those pests are attracted to by looking at the food, water, and shelter the area provides for the pest. The lessons then look at ways to get rid of the pest in a greener way instead of reaching for the pesticides, which are so dangerous for adults, children, and animals. Each lesson includes a take-home activity to get parents involved. The site also has parent letters to introduce them to the program. To add to your lessons, Junior P.I.  provides contact information to have a representative from Orkin come and speak with your students. The site also provides great assessment tools from rubrics for projects to assessment menus for alternatives to tests.

Once your Junior Pest Investigators have completed all of their lessons you can have them put what they’ve learned into practice. This site offers a contest to show what your students have learned and how they are applying it. Winners win a Junior Pest Investigators Learning Library and a science-education grant for your school. Don’t let this teachable moment pass you by. -MONIQUE ST.LOUIS

Junior Pest Investigators

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Whenever I have trouble wrapping my head around a difficult concept, I turn to cartoons to explain them (note: that said, I would not recommend turning to Wile E. Coyote for demonstrations on the laws of gravity).

Being an English major, I need all the help I can get when it comes to biology. That’s why I couldn’t pass up Biology in Motion, an online collection of demonstrations and interactive activities that make learning biology easy and fun.

Check out activities that explain evolution, or demonstrations of digestion and the cardiovascular system. For the kid who always has to go to the bathroom, have a look at an explanation of how kidneys affect the solute concentration in urine. You can find these and lots more at Biology in Motion, and the site itself can do a lot better job of explaining what it offers than I can. Maybe there’s a cartoon for that, too? -BILL FERRIS

Biology in Motion

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If you or your students ever take a walk in the woods on a field trip, it’s a good idea to know the potential dangers. I’m not just talking about bears, either. You can find a lot of plants that can harm humans through ingestion, or even by simple touch.

Before heading into the wild, arm yourself by reading this list of the 20 Deadliest Plants on the Planet. You’ll find the usual suspects like hemlock and deadly nightshade [editor’s note: that’s a really cool name for a plant], some wolves in sheep’s clothing like the angel’s trumpet, plus a couple surprises - I knew poison ivy makes you itchy, but I had no idea if you burned it, the smoke can kill you if you breathe it in. Don’t miss the doll’s eyes plant, which looks a lot like what it sounds like. The berries are chock full of cardiogenic toxins which can give you a heart attack, but the fact that the berries look like eyeballs will probably be enough to dissuade even the most curious (or hungry) eaters. -BILL FERRIS

20 Deadliest Plants on the Planet via PurpleSlinky

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There’s a whole world down there, and you can bring it to your student engagingly and easily with Ocean Explorer from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). This site has a number of “explorations” based on actual work being done by NOAA scientists, with well-developed lesson plans (some even have adaptations for teaching deaf students). You can pick a lesson by subject, or by a specific exploration project. All lessons are correlated to national science standards.

An example is the lesson on the January 2008 Bonaire expedition in the Caribbean. The  lessons offered for Grades 5-6 include one on Pi by looking at surface area, or a more language-arts-oriented lesson where students design a public information campaign to save coral reefs.

Included below is a link to a video from Dr. Robert Ballard, famous ocean explorer and NOAA scientist. The video explains the motivation behind the Jason project and this site which is to publicize ocean exploration, and to engage and educate the next generation of oceanographers. -ALICE MERCER

NOAA Ocean Explorer
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Photo Credit: Ocean Blue by Micah A. Ponce

Ever caught an anglerfish? Unless you own a submarine, you probably haven’t. And for that matter, why would you want to catch one? They’re all teeth, and pretty scary looking. The ocean is teeming with horrific-looking creatures, from the vampire squid to the hatchetfish. Trust me, you don’t want to get any closer to these guys than Monsters of the Deep Sea, a site which gives you the skinny on the scariest sea life imaginable.

True to the site’s name, Monsters of the Deep Sea is swimming with ocean life that looks like it belongs on the Saturday night creature feature. The site’s writers apparently agree, as they describe every other critter as “something that swam out of a late-night science fiction movie,” or “one of the most unusual-looking fish in the deep sea.”

Redundant metaphors aside, Monsters of the Deep Sea gives students a fascinating look at what evolution churns out at 3,000 feet below sea level. Often, it isn’t pretty, but like a good horror flick, that’s why it’s so compelling. -BILL FERRIS

Monsters of the Deep Sea

Being an English major, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around some of the sciences. Most of my knowledge of genetics and DNA comes from Jurassic Park. Lucky for me I found a slick site called DNA from the Beginning, which uses flash animation to spell out DNA basics.

For example, take their current feature, Inside Cancer. This presentation taught me about the cell mutations that lead to a tumor (it also taught me I might want to cut back on red meat). It’s thorough and easy to follow, breaking down the disease by type, causes, and prevention methods, using illustrative visual aids that render these complicated concepts simple enough even for me. Your students will likely find the info on molecules and the work of Gregor Mendel more relevant to their lives, or at least to their upcoming tests.

DNA from the Beginning is a great resource, and the animation component will engage your students. The only way to make it more entertaining would be to add some cloned dinosaurs. -BILL FERRIS

DNA from the Beginning

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There has been a lot of talk about the lack of opportunities for kids to go outside and interact with nature. I once had a class at a school in Oakland that was less than 2 miles from the San Francisco Bay, that could not answer in the affirmative when asked if they lived by the ocean.

Who would’ve thought computers could help get kids outdoors? A Walk in the Woods is a great site from the University of Illinois Extension that can help give background on the woods and how to commune with nature to kids who may not have had that experience. You start with a self-guided slideshow. It gives guidance on what to look for on a sojourn in the woods (the slide show is also available in Spanish). Next is Nature Notes, which provides vocabulary with picture clues. After that, check out the Getting Ready slide show which shows you how to prepare for the trip. And when you’re done, Fun Place lets your kids write about their experience. There’s even a Teacher’s Guide and Resources page. Get ready for your next walk in the woods with this informative and useful Website. -ALICE MERCER

A Walk in the Woods

“So how about this weather, huh?”

For your average citizen, that question is at best a clichéd icebreaker. If you’re an earth science or biology teacher, however, it’s often a jump ramp to thrilling topics like hurricanes, ocean levels, and adiabatic heating and cooling. To help you out, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (or NOAA, because I am not typing that again) has some great educational resources for all grade levels. These tools will let your students do everything from learning about the biological importance of coral reefs to checking out how the National Weather Service alerts people to approaching storms.

My one gripe is that NOAA equates “for kids” with the Comic Sans font, the most obnoxious of all type faces. Their “Primarily for Students” page is also pretty text-heavy, especially for their resources geared toward younger learners. That said, the content itself more than makes up for any graphical deficiencies. And after you check out the materials on the NOAA website, you’ll be able to overcome the conversational deficiencies of folks who lead with, “So how about this weather?” -BILL FERRIS

NOAA Education

April 25 marks the 55th anniversary of Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA. That’s why the National Human Genome Research Institute is celebrating National DNA Day. Your class can get in on the fun by participating in a live online chat from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 25. Students will have the chance to converse with top genetic researchers about how their work will impact everything from medicine to cloning dinosaurs for a theme park on a remote Caribbean island.

The DNA Day website also features webcasts and slide shows that will help explain DNA to students, whether they’re new to genetics or they’re considering a career as a mad scientist. However you want to present the material, DNA Day is a way to genetically engineer your next science lesson to be a success. -BILL FERRIS

National DNA Day

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Finally, you can get hold of some DNA for your mad experiments science lab assignment without having to suck it out of amber-encased flies. The folks at Null Hypothesis show you an easy way to extract DNA from a banana. All you’ll need is common household or labhold stuff like rubbing alcohol, dish soap, coffee filters, and of course, a banana.

Null Hypothesis also provides suggestions like using other DNA sources, like peas or chicken liver (do this at your own olfactory risk, however). You’ll probably want to come up with a few discussion questions of your own, too.

Thanks to this experiment, genetic research has never seemed so simple. Remember the lessons of Jurassic Park, though, and be careful while messing around with the building blocks of life. You don’t want to have a bananasaurus on your hands. On second thought, yes you do. -BILL FERRIS

DNA From a Banana via Null Hypothesis

From the ‘World of Tomorrow’ department: Cell Biology Animation gets the Flash and 3D treatment on JohnKyrk.com. Ever wanted to know what a Golgi Apparatus really looks like? Well, cross your eyes and point your browser over to this site, which uses Flash technology and old school auto-stereoscopy to help present animated versions of what’s happening on a cellular level in your body right now. Caveat Emptor: If you didn’t have any luck with those ‘magic eye’ posters in the early 90’s, then this might be a headache inducing experience– though you don’t have to see the 3D to get the gist of it.

Some of the featured animations include DNA, Photosynthesis, and a great Cell Function overview. The presentation of each is quite beautiful as well as being intellectually engaging. The lessons are all informative and fun, and definitely give visual nuance to your Bio class without the smell of formaldehyde. Check out some of Kyrk’s other works while you’re there– his 3D architectural art is quite stunning, too. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Cell Biology Animation