Thing #4

Thinkfinity

Activity #1: Sunburn, Sunscreen, and Cancer
This activity was one of the Science NetLinks from AAAS. It was a nice activity relating skin cancer and sun exposure. In my Anatomy & Physiology class, we like to talk about how "no tan is a safe tan." But this activity had sections where kids could classify their skin type and relate it to their risk of skin cancer with sun exposure. It also had a neat part of the activity where kids calculated their sun exposure related to their geographical location and time of the year. The assessment ideas were also interesting. It reminded me of the PBL course that I went through this summer. Overall, I really liked this activity. I will be sure to add it to my Delicious links and try it out next fall when we talk about the skin.

Activity #2: Asparagus Odor
I couldn't pass up this activity :) I love to increase the "gross factor" with my students, and this is just the way. It seemed like a nice way to add some variety into a lesson--a short podcast and an article. And when we talk about genetics, it's always nice to have examples that don't include visual physical characteristics (hair color, eye color, etc...). This would be a very easy lesson to incorporate. As I was looking through some of the lessons, I noticed that a lot of the lessons were in this "short & easy" format. I liked that!