Noncommercial Web Resources for Biology Teaching

A presentation at TALENT workshop, Manchester Community College, Oct. 30, 2001
Thomas M. Terry, Assoc. Prof. of Molecular & Cell Biology
The University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269

This page is located at    http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~terry/Common/talent.html    and can be accessed at your convenience for further study.
Last revised: Monday, August 26, 2002
  1. Exemplars: courses on the Web
    World Lecture Hall: access to course materials in all disciplines
    Resources for Microbiology and Biology Educators; access to current course materials by Tom Terry.

  2. Peer-Reviewed and Professional society collections
    ASM Education Instructional Library. Includes classroom resources, visual resource collection. A good model for how a professional organization can collect and host online resources.
    MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. A clearing-house of recommened and rated links to useful online resources, including simulations, activities, learning objects and more.
    Howard Hughes Medical Institute Holiday Lectures on Science Program. Each year's lectures topic includes high quality animations and/or simulations of laboratory activities. Use Quicktime, Shockwave, or Flash plug-ins (see below). To access only the animations and visual resources, visit the BioInteractive center.
    • Sex determination (2001)
    • Biological Clocks (2000)
    • Infectious Diseases (1999)
    • Cardiovascular Genetics (1998(
    • Neurobiology (1997)
    • Immunology (1996)
    • RNA (1995)
    • Genes and Gender (1994)
    • Biological Structure (1993)

  3. Good collections of Biology Images
    Cells Alive by James Sullivan. Extensive collection of photomicrographs, short videos, and informational pages covering a variety of topics in cell biology
    Dennis Kunkel Microscopy. Extensive collection of colorized electron micrographs, mostly SEM with some TEM. Kunkel now requires you to send him a list of graphics and your intended use, for which he will give you free educational permission.
    Chime Resources by Eric Martz at UMass. Excellent collection of resources for viewing molecular structure files (pdb and others). Requires Chime plug-in
    Biology Animation Library from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Includes shockwave animations of Polymerase Chain Reaction , Southern Blotting , and more. Requires Shockwave plug-in
    Internet Pathology Laboratory
    Immunology Animations - Malcolm Campbell
    Harvey Project Physiology Links
    Powers of 10
    Plate Tectonics animations
    Directory of Biology Animations
    Tom Volk's Fungi

  4. Access to Software and Plug-ins :
    Tucows: access to software for any task related to the internet. Much of it is free, some is shareware or demos of commercial software. Everything is rated in cows -- 5 cows is the top!
    CNET Download.com: large collection of software in all categories.
    Shockwave and Flash plug-in: allows viewing sophisticate interactive and animated files
    Chime plug-in: allows interactive viewing of molecular data files. Check the instructions for limits on supported browser versions.
    Quicktime plug-in: new version supports streaming downloads so you can start watching a movie while still downloading.