Websites of note

A number of colleagues have gainfully attended ALT-C, the conference of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT).1 The next conference will be ALT-C 2007 in Nottingham, England, between September 4 and 6, 2007. ALT is the pre-eminent United Kingdom body bringing together teachers, researchers, and policy makers in educational technologies. ALT was formed in 1993 and has a permanent staff based in Oxford. The organization brings together commercial providers of electronic learning support, government bureaus, and teachers. The website has links to conference proceedings, so a wealth of contemporary thinking on multimedia issues can be seen in overview. ALT-C 2006 was held in Edinburgh, Scotland, between September 5 and 7, 2006. The 2006 proceedings on the website include keynote contributions by Diana Oblinger and Tim O'Shea; summaries of “next generation learners” by Phil Candy and Gilly Salmon; Terry Anderson's summary of “next generation technology”; and Chris Yapp's summary of “next generation providers.” There are some free abstracts of articles here, but it may well be that you will join AACE to derive further benefit from this large professional society administered from Chesapeake, VA. Membership can include subscriptions to AACE's international journals (International Journal on E-Learning, Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, Journal of Interactive Learning Research, Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, and lastly, The Journal of Technology and Teacher Education). Members get discounts on conference registrations and copies of proceedings. Members also have access to AACE's two electronic journals, Educational Technology Review and Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education. There are regional chapters of the society to cater to local interaction of members. To reward excellence, members can also receive AACE awards. A search of publications available, using the unqualified term “multimedia,” returned 1,000 hits from papers that were in journals and conference proceedings. Adding “biochemistry” to multimedia produced only two papers, both from the Edmedia 1999 conference. This site is a monumental compendium of links to quality educational sources on the web, mounted by the Harvard University Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. Regrettably, there are no credits posted to acknowledge the team that did the hard work. The scope is such that almost any biomolecular topic that you could wish to research is covered somewhere in the well organized lists. There are two major divisions: (1) link resources within this site, such as biochemistry and molecular biology, biomolecular and biochemical databases (sequences, structures, etc.), educational resources, evolution, immunology, jobs (biology-related), online biological journals and articles, and lastly, zebrafish links and (2) other links (not mounted at Harvard), such as general internet bio resources, search engines and links, banks and tables, selected model organism databases, selected other biological databases, biological software directories, and then a cluster of more links. Detailed subcategories are nested below each of the headings. Returning to the top of the list (link resources to biochemistry and molecular biology), the target page brings up an alphabetic list of universities and their special offerings. The list begins “University of Aarhus (2-D PAGE Data base), University of Aberdeen (Biochemistry Department, Computer Graphics Lab)” and continues in like manner through the alphabet. Impressive, even overwhelming, it is a must visit site. This website is provided by Karl J. Miller (Department of Biochemistry, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.) who created all images, text, and designs, unless indicated by acknowledgment. This is a solid online representation of most pathways encountered in a mainstream course on metabolism. Some extra pathways, such as the Calvin cycle, are not yet mounted. The available pathways are listed for selection as follows. (1) Carbohydrate Metabolism: glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, citric acid cycle, pentose phosphate pathway, glycogen biosynthesis and the galactose pathway; (2) Lipid Metabolism: activation of fatty acids, β-oxidation of fatty acids (even chain, odd chain, and polyunsaturated fatty acids), cholesterol biosynthesis; (3) Amino Acid Metabolism: Krebs-Henseleit urea cycle, shikimate pathway, phenylalanine and tyrosine biosynthesis, tryptophan biosynthesis; and (4) Energy Metabolism: oxidative phosphorylation and the chemistry of ATP synthesis. A feature is the ability to view structures as standard two-dimensional drawings or download three-dimensional representations of substrates that can be viewed and manipulated with the Chime plug-in for molecular modeling. Miller is a graduate in chemistry, and this shows in the attention to chemical detail. Jim Sullivan has created Cells Alive, building on 30 years of experience with film and computer images of living cells for education and medical research. The site has been available and updated annually since 1994 and now hosts over four million visitors a year. Most of the text and images are provided by Jim Sullivan for individual use at no cost. However, some significant items do require registration and purchase. Authors of teaching materials can purchase items featuring immune cells, bacteria, parasites, and aquatic organisms from the video library. The material is variable in standard due to the long period over which it has been generated. The material is most relevant to students new to biology but has interesting niches for advanced students studying areas such as immune cell function. A quick browse is rather frustrating, and it takes time to appreciate just how much is on offer. At this site, the University of Texas Medical Branch offers a large resource of data on all mammalian organelles, written in a style suited to graduate students. For example, under “What happens to old, worn-out mitochondria?” we find “Mitochondrial numbers are controlled by autophagy. This is a process by which lysosomes are involved in controlling cell constituents.” A micrograph is shown to illustrate the process. “Autophagy begins by wrapping endoplasmic reticulum membranes around the mitochondrion. Then, vesicles come from the Golgi complex and join with the autophagic vacuole. These vesicles contain hydrolases attached to the mannose 6 phosphate receptors in the vesicle membranes. The lysosome web page discusses their function and fate. Recall that they fuse with the autophagic vacuole. The acid pH then allows the hydrolases to be removed from their receptors. The receptors are recycled back to the Golgi complex in other vesicles. In the meantime, the lysosome forms as the pH drops and the cells begin to degrade the contents.” The contents read like the chapter contents of a heavy cell biology textbook, and the material never disappoints for accuracy and good detail. It is not a sophisticated production, but well worth a browse. I had a moment of nostalgic recognition when I came across this site after logging on to take a web-based survey run by a professional society I belong to. The survey was presented by Surveymonkey software. The recognition was that in the 1980s I wrote a computer program, titled SURVEY, that ran on stand alone computers and was used by government agencies to gather data which was temporarily stored on floppy disks. The agencies using my program generated the questions on a word processor, with some embedded key directions, and the SURVEY program presented the questions in an appropriate format and stored the data for analysis. The tasks of conducting a survey remain the same, but now, anyone can use Surveymonkey to do the hard work to mount a contemporary presentation. Surveymonkey features include: (1) generate surveys with an unlimited number of questions; (2) skip logic to customize the path a respondent takes through a survey; (3) designate required answers to ensure that a response is entered to essential questions; (4) randomize answer choices to eliminate order bias; (5) add a page head logo indicating your organization; and (6) create custom themes with specified fonts, sizes, and colors. Once a survey is complete, respondents will be redirected to the page of your choice. In analysis, you can find patterns in results such as locating only respondents who answered choice x in question y. Results can be imported into Excel to create graphs. For small surveys (10 questions and 100 responses per survey), the service is free. A professional subscription is U.S. $19.95 per month and includes up to 1000 responses. The pictures of active bicycle riders give this site away as not being what you might expect but rather a Vancouver group in Canada that takes to cycling through the Rocky Mountains. The Krebs Cycle Club name is a deliberate pun on the famous metabolic cycle. The site informs the uninitiated that “In most higher animals, including humans, the Krebs cycle is essential for the oxidative metabolism of glucose and other simple sugars. The breakdown of glucose to carbon dioxide and water is a complex set of chemical interconversions called carbohydrate catabolism, and the Krebs cycle is the second of three major stages in the process, occurring between glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation.”

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