Events

It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s Barbara’s Jumping Genes!
Bringing Scientific Spotlights and NGSS to an old favorite: Alu PCR

On Saturday December 8, 2018 twenty-four teachers from across the bay gathered to see our new NGSS updates to this classic classroom PCR lab activity.  We explored Barbara McClintock’s Nobel Prize winning work on Jumping Genes as an anchoring phenomenon for learning about common non-coding regions in everyone’s DNA called Alu Transposable Elements.  See the new curricula here.

The workshop was conducted by Debbie Clark, who teaches biology and biotechnology at Arroyo High School in San Lorenzo. She introduced our new Lesson Plan which walks through all the detailed steps needed to teach this activity in an easy and straightforward way, so that it is accessible to all kinds of teachers and learners!

Feedback from teachers after the workshop:
“The workshop on Saturday was easily one of the best I have ever attended.”
“You always give great presentations!”
“I will recommend similar BABEC events to my colleagues with great enthusiasm!”
“Excellent workshop. I attended the last one too, and look forward to the next one”
“This curriculum will be perfect following heredity and going into evolution”
“Depth, pacing, and pedagogical techniques all seemed on point”
“Good modeling teaching technique”