Evolution Site - Teaching About Evolution
Despite the best efforts of biology teachers, misinformation about evolution persist. Pop science nonsense has led many people to believe that biologists don't believe evolution.
This site, which is a companion to the PBS program offers teachers resources that promote evolution education while avoiding the types of misconceptions that can make it difficult to understand. It's laid out in the "bread crumb" format to facilitate navigation and orientation.
Definitions
Evolution is a complicated and challenging subject to teach well. 에볼루션 사이트 is often misunderstood even by non-scientists, and even some scientists use definitions that confuse the issue. This is especially relevant to debates about the definition of the word itself.
It is therefore crucial to define the terms that are used in evolutionary biology. The website for the PBS show, Understanding Evolution, does this in a clear and helpful way. The site is both an accompanying site for the 2001 series, but also a resource of its own. The material is presented in a nested fashion that aids navigation and orientation.
The site defines terms such as common ancestor and the gradual process. These terms help frame the nature and significance of evolution with other scientific concepts. The site then offers an overview of how the concept of evolution has been vetted and verified. This information will help to dispel the myths created by creationists.
You can also access a glossary that contains terms that are used in evolutionary biology. These terms include:
Adaptation: The tendency for heritable traits to become better suitable to a particular setting. This is the result of natural selection, which occurs when organisms with better adapted characteristics are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with less adapted characteristics.
Common ancestor (also known as common ancestor): The most recent ancestor shared by two or more species. By studying the DNA of these species, it is possible to identify the common ancestor.
Deoxyribonucleic acid: A large biological molecule that holds the information necessary for cell replication. The information is stored in a sequence of nucleotides that are strung together to form long chains, also known as chromosomes. Mutations are responsible for the creation of new genetic information inside cells.
Coevolution is a relation between two species where evolutionary changes of one species are influenced by evolutionary changes in the other. Coevolution can be observed in the interaction of predator and prey, or parasites and hosts.
Origins
Species (groups of individuals that can interbreed) change through natural changes in the characteristics of their offspring. These changes are caused by a variety of factors such as natural selection, genetic drift and gene pool mixing. The evolution of a new species could take thousands of years, and the process could be slowed down or accelerated by environmental factors like climate change or the competition for food or habitat.
The Evolution site follows the evolution of different groups of animals and plants, focusing on major transitions within each group's past. It also examines the evolution of humans and is a subject that is of particular interest to students.
Darwin's Origin was written in 1859, when only a handful of antediluvian fossils of humans were discovered. The most famous among them was the skullcap and associated bones found in 1856 in the Little Feldhofer Grotto in Germany that is now thought to be an early Homo neanderthalensis. It is unlikely that Darwin knew about the skullcap, which was published in 1858, one year after the first edition of The Origin. Origin.
While the site is focused on biology, it also offers a lot of information about geology and paleontology. One of the most appealing features of the website are a series of timelines that show how climatic and geological conditions have changed over time, as well as an outline of the distribution of some of the fossil groups featured on the site.
Although the site is a companion to the PBS television series but it also stands on its own as an excellent source for teachers and students. The site is extremely well-organized and has clear links between the introduction information in Understanding Evolution (developed with support from the National Science Foundation) and the more specialized components of the museum's Web site. These links make it easier to transition from the cartoon style of Understanding Evolution pages into the more sophisticated worlds of research science. Particularly there are hyperlinks to John Endler's research with Guppies that demonstrate the importance of ecology in evolutionary theory.
Diversity
The evolution of life has produced a variety of animals, plants and insects. Paleobiology is the study of these creatures within their geographical context and offers many advantages over the modern observational and research methods in its exploration of evolutionary processes. In addition to examining the processes and events that happen regularly or over a lengthy period of time, paleobiology can be used to study the relative abundance of various groups of organisms and their distribution across geological time.
The website is divided into different options to learn about evolution. One of the paths, "Evolution 101," takes the viewer through the evolution of nature and the evidence of evolution. The path also reveals common misconceptions about evolution and the evolution of thought.
Each of the other sections of the Evolution site is similarly developed, with materials that can support a variety of different pedagogical levels and curriculum levels. The site includes a variety of interactive and multimedia resources that include video clips, animations and virtual labs as well as general textual content. The content is presented in a nested bread crumb style that facilitates navigation and orientation within the large Web site.
The page "Coral Reef Connections" For instance, the page "Coral Reef Connections" provides a comprehensive overview of coral relationships and their interactions with other organisms, and then is enlarged to show one clam that is able communicate with its neighbors and react to changes in conditions of the water at the reef level. This page, along with the other multidisciplinary, multimedia, and interactive pages on the site, provide an excellent introduction to a broad variety of topics in evolutionary biology. The material also provides an explanation of the role of natural selection and the concept of phylogenetic analysis, which is a crucial method to understand evolutionary changes.
Evolutionary Theory
For biology students the concept of evolution is a major thread that connects all branches of the field. A vast collection of books helps in teaching evolution across all disciplines of life science.
One resource, which is a companion to the PBS television series Understanding Evolution, is an exceptional example of a Web site that offers both depth and breadth in its educational resources. The site has a variety of interactive learning modules. It also has a "bread crumb structure" that helps students move away from the cartoon style that is used in Understanding Evolution and onto elements on this site that are more closely linked to the worlds of research science. For instance, an animation introducing the notion of genetic inheritance leads to a page that highlights John Endler's experiments with artificial selection with guppies from the native ponds of Trinidad.
Another helpful resource is the Evolution Library on this site, which contains an extensive collection of multimedia assets related to evolution. The contents are organized into curricula-based pathways that correspond to the learning goals established in the standards for biology. It contains seven short videos that are designed for classroom use. They can be streamed or purchased as DVDs.
Evolutionary biology is a field of study with a lot of important questions to answer, such as what causes evolution and how fast it occurs. This is particularly relevant for the evolution of humans, where it was difficult to reconcile religious beliefs that held that humanity has a special place in creation and a soul, with the notion that our physical traits evolved from the apes.
There are a myriad of other ways evolution could occur, with natural selection as the most popular theory. Scientists also study other types like mutation, genetic drift and sexual selection.
While many scientific fields of study have a conflict with literal interpretations in religious texts, the concept of evolution biology has been a subject of intense debate and opposition from religious fundamentalists. While certain religions have managed to reconcile their beliefs with the ideas of evolution, other religions haven't.