BioInteractive Playlists

Want to learn more about BioInteractive’s resource playlists? Check out the videos by Chris Monsour and the article by Karen Lucci below.

Leveraging Curated Playlists

Interested in exploring our new playlists? In this video, Ohio educator Chris Monsour walks you through playlist features, including an overview of playlists curated by BioInteractive.

 

If you’re currently overwhelmed looking for online resources, and would like a way to find organized resources around a topic or concept, welcome to BioInteractive playlists! Having too many choices can be frustrating; playlists solve that problem by providing a coherent and manageable sequence of resources that focus on one topic or concept. Many of these resources can be used in online teaching.

You can follow this link to go directly to BioInteractive’s curated playlist collection. Currently, there are 12 curated playlists available — and more are coming. The playlists currently available focus on topics including evolution, genetics, gene regulation, and ecology.

You can also navigate to the playlists by going to the BioInteractive website and clicking on “Planning Tools” on the top-right side. From here, you can click on “Resource Playlists.”

 

The playlists provide a sequence of resources — such as videos, classroom activities, and interactive media — that you would use as part of a lesson sequence.

Each of the provided playlists starts with a description followed by learning objectives and implementation details. When you select a playlist, you will see the resources and ways to use them. Below is a screenshot of an example playlist, “Teaching the Central Dogma Using the Rock Pocket Mouse and Genetic Medicine.” Right away, you can see a description of the playlist in general; click on “Show More” to see all of the learning objectives, the suggested level (general high school, AP/IB, college, etc.), and a suggested time requirement.

Below the description, the playlist shows the sequence of resources for the topic. Currently, most playlists have anywhere from four to eight resources. Each resource description has detailed suggestions for classroom implementation. You can click on a resource’s title or image to open its webpage, which provides downloads and additional information. Some of these resource webpages are also accompanied by short videos in which a teacher explains how they use that particular resource with their students. 

Playlists are meant to be coherent lesson sequences, so it’s helpful to know how each resource contributes to the listed student learning outcomes. Start by looking at the first resource in the playlist. When you click on “Show More,” you can see the details and decide if this resource is appropriate for your class and your objectives, and how this learning event relates to others in the playlist. For the playlist above, I click on the first resource, The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and Adaptation, and this is what I see:

I consider what my students already know and which concepts I want to introduce. Because I’m  familiar with the film, I know it will engage them and that I can use it going forward to make connections with other class activities. I have to think about my students and where I may need to modify or supplement the film. 

Then, when I look at the next resource in the playlist, “Molecular Genetics of Color Mutations in Rock Pocket Mice,” I know that I want to tie these resources together. I may look at the activity and decide that we are going to do the whole activity, but that I’m going to chunk it into sections and have students check in with questions that I can use as formative assessments. I may also see connections between resources or concepts that I have not made before and that my students will benefit from being made explicit.

What I appreciate about the playlists is that they give me a sequence of classroom resources that are ready to use, free, and engage in science in an authentic way. 

Did you find a playlist that you want to use? Share it using Twitter, Facebook, email, or one of over a hundred other ways.

Creating Original Playlists

As mentioned above, playlists are lesson sequences that educators can use to organize topics or units. In this video, Chris Monsour walks through how to make your own playlist including selecting resources and adding relevant notes.