Using Blooms Taxonomy to Sequence IB Biology work
To help students practise expressing their ideas in increasingly complex ways it may be useful to consider using the IB command terms in the same sort of structure as Blooms taxonomy. Looking at these...
When students work hard and yet still score low marks in IB Biology Exams.
I have been troubled for a number of years about those students who write a lot of correct Biology in their exams but only achieve low marks. As an IB examiner I find myself scratching around trying to...
Genetic Tools to bring back Extinct Species
The idea of de-extinction, deliberately resurrecting species killed off by human activity, is challenging one of the fundamental concepts of biology: what determines a distinct species. Recently there...
Genetic Screening Reveals 60 Genes Linked to Cancer
Imagine a world where your doctor can tell you exactly which cancers you are likely to develop from a simple blood test. Would you want your employer or life insurance company to know this? Would you...
fMRI and comatose
In option E, students are to study about two aspects of the human brain. First how various ways of studying the brain leads to our understanding of how the brain functions. The methods include lesions...
Carbon load
I went for a hike the other day as the weather was wonderful. The path went through three different types of forests: monoculture spruce plantations, single wood beech and mixed species forest. The...
Click to Cure - Zooniverse Biology
If your IB Biology class has just finished the Cells topic and has spent some time looking at the stages of mitosis in a microscope then your students could be ready to participate in real biological...
New from old
The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to two scientists, one who discovered the process of cloning by nuclear transfer and the second for reprogramming of mature cells by gene insertions....
Nobel Prize 2012
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2012 was awarded to two Americans who have worked to elucidate the structure and function G- Protein Coupled Receptors or GPCR's. This article "Cells and Sensiblity" is...
Body Scan
I have not had to go through one of the body scan machines yet but the security for air traffic apparently outweighs the invasion of personal rights. But this is a different story. Nearly two years ago...