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Visual LearnersThis video is only one video made by Rob Lue's team at Harvard to make educational animations in biology, but it helps to visualize an entire semester of cellular goings on for any biology teacher, be they high or middle school lessons or college lectures. You can go on and on about the DNA polymerase or how proteins are embedded in the cell wall, but this video shows it all happening in real time and requires students to use their knowledge to explain what they are seeing. You can also make GIFs out of the video for specific units! Students should be shown incredible worlds to open them to future wonder and opportunity, as Piaget describes exploratory learning as more effective than just telling them how the world works.
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Limitations
Because this video is not narrated, it can be confusing without explanation. There are also cellular processes going on in the video that I can't even understand or explain. However, I first saw this in my introductory biochemistry course at Harvard, and it amazed me entirely. First, it is colorful and illuminating. Even more, though, it opened my eyes to how one can contribute to science--Rob Lue is an animator, not a scientist, but scientific illustration can be incredibly important in this world, so this video bridges gaps between artsy students and sciency students. Another limitation is it isn't super relevant to identity development, unless students are able to make connections across careers and such. It's not very culturally relevant.
Further Info
Despite these limitations, this video could be used with scaffolding, which corresponds to Vygostky's Zone of Proximal Development. The students might not be able to describe every single scene in this video even after a unit on cell biology, but they can work off of their prior knowledge to try to develop explanations of certain scenes. I would want to narrate this video and make GIFs out of smaller portions, so we can go through the video step-by-step. I would use it while discussing cell biology--specifically, the cellular membrane and the proteins that are embedded within it. I would also want to use it while discussing the central dogma (transcription, translation, replication) and DNA. So this would be both a supplement to a lecture, but also something I would question the students on.
Because this video is not narrated, it can be confusing without explanation. There are also cellular processes going on in the video that I can't even understand or explain. However, I first saw this in my introductory biochemistry course at Harvard, and it amazed me entirely. First, it is colorful and illuminating. Even more, though, it opened my eyes to how one can contribute to science--Rob Lue is an animator, not a scientist, but scientific illustration can be incredibly important in this world, so this video bridges gaps between artsy students and sciency students. Another limitation is it isn't super relevant to identity development, unless students are able to make connections across careers and such. It's not very culturally relevant.
Further Info
Despite these limitations, this video could be used with scaffolding, which corresponds to Vygostky's Zone of Proximal Development. The students might not be able to describe every single scene in this video even after a unit on cell biology, but they can work off of their prior knowledge to try to develop explanations of certain scenes. I would want to narrate this video and make GIFs out of smaller portions, so we can go through the video step-by-step. I would use it while discussing cell biology--specifically, the cellular membrane and the proteins that are embedded within it. I would also want to use it while discussing the central dogma (transcription, translation, replication) and DNA. So this would be both a supplement to a lecture, but also something I would question the students on.