LearningLabs
Introducing new approaches to teaching evolution in secondary schools
Heidelberg, 12 - 14 March 2008
Group Picture
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Although evolution is one of the most important topics in biology, it is probably amongst the most misunderstood ones. Hence, we decided to organise our first 2008 LearningLABs at EMBL Heidelberg precisely around the topic of evolution.
The 3-day LearningLABs programme was designed to enable participants to deepen their understanding of major evolutionary concepts, learn about the strategies and tools that evolutionary biologists use in their scientific approach and get familiar with teaching kits and educational games that present evolution in an integrated, modern and proactive way.
A group of 24 science high school teachers from Croatia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain attended the LearningLABs.
We were lucky that EMBL Group Leaders Michael Knop and Detlev Arendt were keen to contribute to the LearningLABs by giving exciting seminars on the Theory of Evolution and on Evolutionary Developmental Biology, respectively. Thomas Wendt, Project Manager at Explo-Heidelberg, gave an overview of the various activities available at this science centre that are aimed at students and teachers. Andrew Moore from the EMBO Science and Society Programme gave an interesting seminar on Molecular Evolution Teaching Resources. The participants were also introduced to the Science in School journal by the editor, Eleanor Hayes.
The practical activities helped participants to understand how molecular data can be used to reveal evolutionary links between species.
This time, we were very happy to count with the contribution of our colleagues, Agnieszka Choluj and Joanna Lilpop from the Science Festival School (SFN) team, based at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IIMCB), who had specially come from Warsaw to instruct a great evolution-related activity developed at the SFN. The activity included "The shared history: evolution recorded in our genes", involved isolation of DNA samples from participants' cheek cells and comparing a particularly variable DNA region (minisatelite D1S80) and a specially conserved one (Met-tRNA gene).
Education Officer Alexandra Manaia together with EMBL PhD students demonstrated two activities especially designed for classroom use:
Aynur Kaya and Raquel Matos instructed the Investigating plant evolution kit, produced by the National Centre for Biotechnology Education (NCBE), which mirrors the molecular methods used in modern plant taxonomy.
DNA samples from different plants were extracted and a specific DNA sequence was amplified by polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). After running the PCR products in Agarose gels, the molecular profiles obtained for each plant were compared to identify possible evolutionary relationships between different plant species.
Corinne Cox instructed a hands-on activity produced by Bio-Rad Life Sciences, leading to obtain and compare fish "molecular fingerprint" profiles and enabling to find out about the possible evolutionary links between different fish species.
Grzesiek Papaj, also from the SFN team, had developed an innovative board-based game that enables players to learn or revise evolution-related concepts. We were very happy that Grzesiek could join us at EMBL to introduce the game to the LearningLABs participants.
Bioinformatics resources are extremely important tools for evolutionary biologists. EMBL research scientists Sean O'Donoghue and Karsten Klein gave an excellent session where participants could compare sequences, produce evolutionary trees and view 3D protein structures.