Video: Visual cliff experiment

This is a short clip illustrating the visual cliff experiment, suitable for section 8.5 making sense of what we see:

Advice for those studying IGCSE Edexcel Biology

I received an email the other day from a concerned parent trying to find help for their child studying IGCSE Edexcel Biology. Although I mainly develop resources for Cambridge IGCSE I did reply because, as we all know, many topics are the same regardless of the exam course being followed. So videos on enzymes etc will be useful whatever exam board is being used.  Anyway I thought it might be useful to replicate my email reply here in case anyone else has the same enquiry:

Hi,

Thank you for your email.

Most of the information and videos on the IGCSE pages will be useful, although the podcasts may well be specific to Cambridge IGCSE. Also the BBC Bitesize and S-cool.co.uk websites are useful. Student_room is also useful (my daughter really likes this site and they have good forums too), click on the revision tab and there are revision notes available for all subjects. For actual lessons, quizzes and audio explanations I think skoool.co.uk is great. However all of these are not specific to edexcel but if you know the syllabus then you can work out what topics are relevant. Usually most topics on these sites will be on your course.

To ensure that you do not spend time learning anything you don’t need to (for example in Cambridge IGCSE they don’t need to know anything about DNA) then it would be useful to have the specification (syllabus). You can get this from the Edexcel website plus examples of exam papers and markschemes. The edexcel site also has a student section with exam tips etc.

Finally text books specific to the course would help, if you do not already have one. Probably the most useful is IGCSE Biology for Edexcel (by Jackie Clegg) and the CGP revision guide for Edexcel biology (always popular). I would recommend getting the textbook as sometimes the syllabus is not always clear or detailed.

I had hoped to get my revision courses and online tuition set up for this exam season, in which case I could have offered to tutor via skype or email. If this maybe of value I can look at paypal invoicing if you wish and offer a couple of sessions.

Anyway, I wish your child a lot of luck in their exam.

Kind regards,
Allison Gardner

AS Level Transport across the membrane: Osmosis

This is the second in the transport across the membrane series of PowerPoint presentations. I am quite proud of some of the explanations and animations here. There is also a supporting video using the same presentation which maybe useful to watch (so you can see how I would explain each slide). This was originally written to support the concept approach Edexcel textbook but it can be used for any A level syllabus. There are integrated questions to encourage the students to apply the theory.

PowerPoint Presentation:

transport-across-the-membrane-osmosis

AS level video on osmosis

Well here is my second attempt at creating a screencast. This time I rose (or sunk) to the challenge of delivering AS level osmosis in 5 minutes! I deserve a medal! I have no idea if this is any good, it was a real squeeze to fit into the time limit. I redid it so many times I was beginning to get cheesed off. I still haven’t sorted the background hum or indeed stop my husband from yelling loudly whilst watching football (soccer for any americans out there) on TV (listen out for him..fortunately he didn’t swear..I think!).
The link to the better quality video on screencast is here: osmosis

The embedded video is below…enjoy and comments are very welcome

Video on facilitated diffusion for Edexcel AS Biology

I am so proud! I have managed to make my first little video using Jing which was recommended to me by Jose Picardo of www.boxoftricks.net (excellent site by the way and I recommend adding him in twitter).

I have embedded the video below but there is also a link to a larger and better version stored on screencast.

facilitated_diffusion

If you use it in any of your blogs etc. please add a link to my site. I will be doing a whole series of little 5 minute videos on transport across the membrane so keep an eye out for those.

I am aware of the sound quality (you can hear me quite well but there is also a hum) and will be buying a better quality microphone. I managed not to say “er” too often but I did this by substituting the “ers” with “so”. I am half-irish so I reckon I can be forgiven for saying it, so!