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Educational Resources Group
HHMI's Educational Resources Group produces science education materials that feature some of the cutting-edge research conducted by HHMI investigators and other scientists. The materials are designed primarily for the nation's high school biology students and their teachers, but they also find an audience among the general public and undergraduate-level students and educators. The products are published in a variety of formats, including streaming Web video, DVD, interactive Web features, and virtual labs on the Web and CD-ROM.
Holiday Lectures on Science
One of the group's most visible activities is the production of HHMI's annual Holiday Lectures on Science and the development of a variety of resources that complement the lectures and enhance their usefulness in the classroom. Each December for more than a decade, about 200 high school students from the Washington, D.C., area have come to HHMI to hear leading scientists, who are often HHMI investigators, talk about new biological concepts in the context of their own research. Topics have included infectious diseases, immunology, sex determination, cardiovascular disease, neurobiology, biological clocks, and obesity.
The lectures are also webcast live and reach students and teachers around the world. To enhance the usefulness of the lecture materials as supplements to the curriculum, they are made available on DVD and HHMI's BioInteractive website.
BioInteractive
The BioInteractive website features virtual labs, animations, and other engaging instructional materials. These can be used to supplement the lecture topics or help teach about important concepts in the biomedical sciences. Content is rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and designed to be of practical use to educators. The animations reveal hidden worlds and complex biological functions that cannot be easily conveyed via text alone or static illustrations. The virtual labs show science as a process while teaching key concepts and current methods and technology for laboratory investigation. The website also contains a virtual museum and many interactive resources.
Educational Partnerships
The work of the Educational Resources group keeps HHMI well-connected to the educational media community and abreast of trends in science education. In recent years the group has partnered with and sponsored the work of several groups. One project provided support to the Cold Spring Harbor Lab's DNA Learning Center to produce the highly acclaimed DNAinterative website, a comprehensive resource for learning and teaching about DNA. In 2005, the group embarked on a new venture with PBS station WGBH, the producers of NOVA. NOVA is producing a new magazine format televised science program called NOVA scienceNOW. HHMI is providing funding and exploring ways to share the online resources of scienceNOW and BioInteractive.org.
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