Notes+for+Presentation

Contents:

General Outline:
 * 1) background
 * 2) info about me
 * 3) about larry
 * 4) about energy Bar Charts
 * 5) Biological Systems and Energy
 * 6) Uses of Energy Bar charts in Biology
 * 7) sample problems for the attendees to work on.
 * 8) In formal one on one discussion about the topic
 * 9) Summary of presentation: Projections for the future.

Introductory information about me: I want to take a few minutes to introduce my self and why I feel called to open this discussion about Biology, Energy and Modeling.

How many of you are classroom teachers? How many of you have 5 years or more classroom experience? 5 years or less? How many of you teach biology? Chemistry? Physical Science or Physics? More than one of the above? All of the above?

As for myself I am a relative new-comer to teaching. I am in my 5th year of teaching. I currently teach chemistry and AP Environmental Science at an urban public school in Philadelphia. In my short tenure as a teacher I have taught in several different school both urban and suburban. I started teaching Biology then decided to teach chemistry, but on my way to teaching chemistry I taught physical science and physics.

I don't know what I thought teaching was going to be like, however, I found out that teaching is a very difficult job. Being that I was a professional before becoming a teacher, I think that is saying something! At this time when I hear so many negative things about teacher, I want to give all of you a hand for being a force in science education.

In addition to my teaching credentials, I have a PhD in biochemistry from Temple University Medical School. I worked about 13 years in biomedical research. As such, I have been privileged to work with many great scientists. I have cloned and sequenced genes, constructed transgenic animals to explore the control of gene expression and I have worked to develop microarrays that allow scientists to survey the expression of 10's of thousands of gene simultaneously.

One of the things that dismayed me when I came to teaching after spending so much time actually practicing science it the tremendous chasim between the way science is practiced and the way it is taught. Doing science is an adventure and a challange however the science classroom is too often a place of memorization of facts from huge textbooks. In my inital years of teaching, my students attitudes seemed to reflect the idea that everything you needed to know was already on the internet if you just know the correct questions to ask. It was easy for me to see their reluctance to study, what was the point if every thing was already known. I was so thrilled when I first me Larry Dukerich at a modeling workshop in July as I was preparing to teach chemistry that September. For me one of the vitally important aspects of the modeling approach is the way that Modeling parallels the practice of science. It gives students the opportunity to collect observable data and through careful analysis of the data they begin to construct an understanding of the physical world. I was very disappointed to learn that modeling in biology was still in it's infancy.

Before I finally get down to business and talk about Energy I need to (as my students would say) give a shout out to Dr. Anita Schuchardt, Mr. William Diehl, Mrs. Elyse Zheng of the Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh. They have really been spearheading Biology Modeling and they have allowed me to share some of their work with you today.

Introductory Information about Energy:

One of the more difficult concepts to understand and to teach is energy.

One thing that makes it difficult is the fact that energy is not matter. Matter consists of things that have mass and take up space and are therefore relatively concrete next to this slippery abstraction we call energy.

Further, the professional fields of physics and chemistry have developed a terminology about energy that when translated for high school students, may cause some students to misunderstand the fundamental nature of Energy itself. (Is there any research supporting the idea that students have misconceptions about energy fostered by the nomenclature)

This session is the continuation of a discussion about how shape the discussion about energy when teaching high school students.

We are going to talk in terms of energy bar charts. Energy bar charts originated with the Physics and Chemistry Modeling Communities, supported by the Arizona State University. Larry Dukerich by co presenter has already talked about energy bar charts in Physics and Chemistry modeling in secondary education earlier this week. More info to introduce Larry.

Can you give us a brief overview of energy bar charts. . .Larry introduced energy bar charts.

Back to Biology

The very nature of Biology brings levels of complication to our discussion about energy that High School treatments of Physics and Chemistry rarely reach.

Energy and is transfer in Biology has a macrocosmic layer where we need to discuss the transfer of energy through biomes and ecosystems as well as a microcosmic level where we talk about the transfer of energy from one location inside of a cell to another.

Further, we can not neatly disect the Marcocosmic away from the microcosmic because the two are inextricably intertwined.

So what am I really talking about?

Two of the most basic biological functions are the way that some living things harvest energy from the sun (Photosynthesis) and then how that energy is turned into chemical energy that is moved around the cell, moved from one cell to another or moved from one organism to anoter through predation.

Photosynthesis (the harvesting of the energy of the sun and the transfer of that energy into a chemical form) and respiration (the use of the chemical energy to do the work of the cell) can be summarized in the following simple formulas. However, the respiration formula alone summarizes 70 sequential steps that must be taken for the fuel to be used.