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How to Use
the FREE Biology Education Website
Science Prof Online
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You have free access to materials used in college-level introductory microbiology & cell biology courses. The Virtual Microbiology Classroom & Virtual Cell Biology Classroom provide a wide range of free educational resources including PowerPoint Lectures, Study Guides, Review Questions and Practice Test Questions.
How to Use the SPO Free Biology Education Resource
Tips from Tami Port, MS, Biology Instructor at Kalamazoo Valley Community College and Chief Executive Nerd of ScienceProfOnline.com
ScienceProfOnline.com is a website I began developing several years ago, in cooperation with Colorado high-school science teacher Alicia Cepaitis, MS. The purpose of the site was to make all the biology teaching materials that we have developed over the years available, free of charge, to other instructors, students and parents.
Page last updated: 8/2014
SPO VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS
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SPO is a FREE science education website. Donations are key in helping us provide this resource with fewer ads.
Please help!
(This donation link uses PayPal on a secure connection.)
SPO now offers a huge collection of science education resources, all free, and is used in 100 countries around the world and all 50 US states.
This site is useful both for new instructors looking for fully-developed, classroom-tested resources and experienced instructors seeking new materials to refresh their curriculum. Students can also independently use the site to help them master many biology topics.
Below is a summary of what the site offers and suggestions on how to use it. Our resources fall into two main categories:
New resources are regularly added to our site. For updates, follow us on Twitter @ScienceProfSPO or like us on Facebook.
How To Get Around the SPO Website
There are two navigation menus at the top of each SPO webpage, one at the very top of the page, listing all main topics, and the Virtual Classroom navigation menu below the banner ad and above the white area. Each page also has a search box in the upper right corner that visitors can use to easily locate the materials they are seeking.
SPO Webpage Layout
All SPO webpages are arranged in a similar format for ease of use. The navigation bars and search box are in the top, green area, of the page. The main content of each page is in the right 2/3 of the white area below. The left 1/3 of the white area is a column that has links to other areas of the site related to that page's content.
Free College & High School Biology Resources
SPO features completely developed and classroom-tested college-level microbiology, cell biology, general biology, and soon anatomy & physiology course materials. Resources available include PowerPoint lectures, laboratory exercises, homework assignments, practice test questions, study guides, sample syllabi, as well as a science photos and video library. These college and high school materials are organized a couple of ways:
Virtual Classrooms
The Virtual Classrooms are essentially ready-made micro and cell curricula that any instructor teaching these subjects could use, either in their entirety or by "cherry picking" specific SPO resources. For example, I use Moodle (similar to Blackboard) as the electronic interface with my class, and, in my online syllabus, provide a link to each SPO lecture topic main page I plan to use. When students click that link, they have easy access to all SPO resources on that topic.
Currently, our Virtual Classrooms include:
"Instructors Corner" Main Pages
Rather than being organized as a complete course that students would access directly, “Instructors Corner” pages have links to all of SPOs teaching resources organized by topic. So if an instructor is looking for a basic inorganic chemistry or molecular genetics lecture and supporting class materials, these can easily be found in the “Instructor's Corner”. The IC pages also provide the editable format of our science Powerpoint lectures and a direct link to the student materials, by topic.
There are three Instructor's Corner pages:
Free Grade School, Home School & Parent Science Education Resources
As a biologist and mother of young children, I wanted to do more home science projects with my kids. So I also developed an area of the website for kids, where we could post the science experiments and activities that we do at home. You can find all of our kid science activities on our Home School and Classroom Science Main Page, or go to each topic page:
Many of these topics include detailed observations, experimental design, science coloring pages and word search activities. As with the Virtual Classrooms described above, the kid science topic pages can be used, as is, for science projects, or teachers can pick, choose and modify any of these resources.
More about ScienceProfOnline.com Website
The ScienceProfOnline.com website does have some advertising on it. These ads generate a very modest income from the site that helps compensate us for the thousands of hours we have put into making our teaching materials available. We continually try to hone the ads to be minimally obtrusive and maximally relevant to the topic of the page they appear on.
Hi! I'm Tami Port,
Chief Executive Nerd of
ScienceProfOnline.com
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Young children are natural born scientists, full of curiosity! Check out the at-home experiments and explorations of a scientist mom & her kids.
The SPO website is best viewed in Google Chrome or Apple Safari.
