Websites of note

The BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium began in 1986 due to the founding efforts of John R. Jungck, Professor of Biology at Beloit College Wisconsin. I was lucky to be an early recipient of information from BioQUEST, and it has served many teachers well as multimedia has evolved. The approach taken was to act as a hub for discussion and dissemination of computer and other approaches to biology teaching. BioQUEST quickly established a large international mailing list and from its founding sent regular free newsletters to a wide group of teachers in schools and tertiary institutions. The newsletter continues as a free electronic journal from the website with E-mail alerts to those who wish to be prompted. A core of peer-reviewed software was soon assembled in the 1980s and has evolved continuously. The current offering is Volume VI of The BioQUEST Library with tools, simulations, databases, and other resources used in undergraduate biology. The software covers evolution, genetics, molecular biology, physiology, developmental biology, botany, and neurobiology. The content (e.g. SequenceIt) is best viewed by looking at the brochure that can be reached by choosing to view BioQUEST publications. The cost of the package has steadily risen over the years to the current level of US$150 for a single copy and graded license arrangements for class use. This is still good value for quality software, and it supports a model of cooperation that is remarkably rare. A comparable sharing occurs in the United Kingdom through the Learning and Teaching Support Network. Harcourt Publishers have now taken on the sales and dissemination of The BioQUEST Library to achieve a fully professional service to users. The philosophy that Jungck uses as a guide to BioQuest developments and inclusions is a “3P's” approach (problem posing, problem solving, and peer persuasion). The approach is elaborated at the website. Another interesting point is that the software has many entries developed originally for Apple computers and that Apple was an early sponsor of the consortium. The relatively advanced software and hardware from Apple in the 1990s for multimedia has arguably led to the multimedia approaches that teachers now enjoy. As for most major publishers, Oxford University Press provides online support for students and lecturers using their text books. Because support is continuously upgraded, you can add yourself to a mailing list to receive updates. If you are not familiar with specific titles, then you can request an inspection copy. I was particularly interested in support for Elliott & Elliott's Biochemistry and Molecular Biology that has now reached its third edition. Unfortunately, the companion site had not been upgraded from support for the second edition when visited. However, the look and feel of the support site has been much improved over previous implementations. You can rapidly get to the text figures, inspect them as small prints, then download them in higher resolution for adaptation in lectures. The Elliott & Elliott material is unique in the style of the graphics, which can be understood as a professional elaboration of what could be readily drawn on overhead transparency sheets (i.e. generally simplified to highlight essential teaching content). Regardless of the edition, the Elliott & Elliott material is likely to please most teachers of introductory biochemistry and molecular biology. Other titles that are supported with a companion site include Gleeson & Maughan's The Biochemical Basis of Sports Performance, Hancock's Cell Signaling, Lesk's Introduction to Bioinformatics, and Taylor & Drickamer's Introduction to Glycobiology. To be held in Berlin in December 2004. ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN claims to be the largest international conference on technology-supported learning and training. Last year, 1,486 participants from 68 countries attended the Berlin event. ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN delegates come from education, business, and government, thereby giving a big-picture view of the forces driving e-learning adoption and innovation. The conference language is English. One of the feature lectures will be given by Jonathon Levy from the company Marketspace. He was previously at Harvard Business School and Cornell University's Office of Distance Learning. An interview with Levy at the website (linked from the Newsletter box) gives a glimpse of the ideas that will be mulled over in Berlin. Some of these thoughts have also been quoted in the commentary on blogs in this issue. A small excerpt of what Levy says follows. “The field is marked by a juxtaposition of new technology and old pedagogy. The confusion and mixed messages in our field today are prevalent largely because the sustainable model for the use of technology in learning—a predictable model that invites large-scale investment and has meaningful measurable outcomes—has yet to be widely recognized. The landscape of knowledge acquisition and knowledge use is changing. To understand where it is all headed, it is important to differentiate between the academic model and the performance model. Academic programs—classes, courses, exams—may be useful when the main goal is knowledge as an end in itself, intellectual achievement. But in the workplace it is performance that matters, and, more than ever before, performance must be executed in an environment where individuals, teams and business units must learn, adapt and excel in real time in the face of constant change. In the workplace, knowledge is no longer an end in itself; it is a means to an end.” This is a commercial career site oriented to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and life science industries. Over a period of 7 years, BioView has enlarged the scope of its career placements for biotechnology and education with an impressive retinue of clients. If you are looking for a job, or seeking to assist others find employment, then browse what is on offer here. There are some superficial news items to add a veneer of something extra, but it is basically a site with a simple function. The Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network is an initiative of the countries of the Americas to exchange biodiversity information. The US contribution is administered by the biological resources discipline of the US Geological Survey. The primary information, news, and links are primarily about invasive species that represent biological control problems. It is not an easy site to get information that would readily be adapted for teaching. However, there is a remarkable option to search for acronyms related to biological informatics and biodiversity as well as a general acronym finder. This is both an amusing diversion and useful when an acronym evades instant interpretation. I tried “FISH” expecting to find “fluorescence in situ hybridization” and recovered this as one of 12 acronyms (another was “forget it stuff happens”—polite form). It is hard to fault the store of esoteric acronyms here. Look at the bottom of the acronym search page and select “Have some buzzword fun.” To extend the attraction of the site there are links to around 50 online biological glossaries and dictionaries. Biological Procedures Online provides free and simple access to well-written, peer-reviewed articles on experimental techniques in biological and medical science. In 1997, Mark Reimer founded the journal while at the University of Waterloo, Canada. The editorial board is now diverse and international. Many undergraduate courses try to incorporate research papers for students to interpret data and approaches, but few papers are suited to this niche. However, most of the articles in this online journal would serve extremely well for analysis of the content by new students. The online access is a bonus in making articles available to students. All articles are listed under Contents. One article that appealed to me for its teaching potential was written by authors at the University of Texas and titled “Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) as a method to calculate the dimerization strength of basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) proteins.” The annual international conference, ALT-C 2004, is to run between September 14 and 16, 2004, at Exeter University in Devon, United Kingdom. This is a conference that a number of colleagues have attended over the years and they have been highly satisfied with the experience. The conference organizers call this the United Kingdom's biggest and most important conference about learning technology. A quick look through the keynote and theme speakers tempted me to attend in 2004. The Association for Learning Technology lists a number of publications, but they are not free on-line. The website also gives access to the latest edition (volume 12) of the journal ALT-J published by the Taylor & Francis Group. Only current ALT-J articles are available on-line and a subscription is needed for access to archives. The articles in the journal are mostly contributed by professional learning support units.

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