Curriculum area in which you teach biotechnology

Biology and General Science

Favourite aspect of teaching biotechnology

It puts science into the ‘real world’. It gives students a reason to learn about cell biology, life processes, genetics, etc., and stimulates them to participate in some of the debates regarding biotechnological issues and advances that rage in wider society.

Most successful biotechnology teaching activity

With my Year 9 Science class we were studying “Rubbish”. Once students had classified the contents of a school bin (a little smelly, but great fun) we discussed what would happen to the rubbish next (i.e., How does it get taken away? Where does it go when it is taken away? Then what?). We talked about landfills a little bit. Students then selected three (smaller) pieces of rubbish from each of the categories they had created in the rubbish classification activity and we buried them in the ground outside our classroom (20-30cm deep). (Don’t forget to mark where you have buried them.) Students wrote this up as an experiment, including making a prediction about which ones would biodegrade and which would not. We then missed a whole heap of classes due to school activities and didn’t get to dig them up until almost two weeks later.

Ideally, I imagine it would be better to check them twice during this time to get an idea how long the process takes [editor’s comments: digging them up will affect the oxygen content, and thus the activity of any anaerobic microbes]. Students knew that the things that had disappeared had rotted away. I used this to talk about microorganisms in the soil, and the life processes they were carrying out, especially getting nutrition.

You could then go on to have students designing and carrying out an experiment of their own, for example, investigating burial depth vs biodegradation, or surface area vs biodegradation…

Favourite biotechnology teaching contexts

• Waste treatment (Junior Science)
• Forensic Biology (Senior Biology)

Biotechnology contexts to investigate further

• Tissue culture
• Nutrigenomics

Favourite biotechnology resources

For Year 13 Biology (Biological Techniques)
Bayley, M. (2000) Designs of Life (2nd ed.), Pearsons Education: Auckland

For Year 11 Biology (Introduced Plants and Animals – Biosecurity and Biological Control)
Walsby J. (2000) Possums Alpha 107, Royal Society of New Zealand: Wellington
Environment Waikato website: www.ew.govt.nz
The Biotechnology Learning Hub: Biological control of possums

Links with the biotechnology community

I am on a New Zealand Mathematics, Science & Technology Teacher Fellowship this year (2006) in order to get some experience in biotechnology industries.