AS Level Biology: cystic fibrosis videos

I had a good look at the range of available videos and these very short ones seem to be the most informative:

Video 1: Very short introductory video explaining what CF is

Link to video on About.com (1.25 minutes)

Living with CF videos:
1: This video 8.22 minutes. I found this a very useful video to show the students so the appreciate the seriousness of the disease. It is quite emotional.

Dying Young

2. This video lasts about 9 minutes and outlines the treatments and medications required in one day for a 10 year old girl. Again it is useful to show as it highlights to the students all the medications, and the reasons for them.

Day in the Life

This video lasts for 3 minutes 30 seconds and is an excellent overview of  how CF is inherited, symptoms and treatment:

Advice from my Year 11′s on how to revise:

I asked my Year 11′s what advice they would give to year 10 on how to revise for their Year 10 exams. This is the summary of their most popular points:

• Create a revision timetable
• Have little 10 minute breaks every hour.
• Make conclusions after each paragraph
• Just LISTEN in class and think to yourself “do you understand it”
• Use Cue cards for definitions and test yourself until you can remember the answers with ease.
• Get off Facebook/MSN/ichat etc. (loads of students suggest this)-TURN YOUR COMPUTER OFF.
• Get Sleep!
• Read through your textbook.
• Concentrate when you are reading, don´t be thinking about other things.
• Make yourself a little revision test on each topic and test yourself.
• Keep your books and notes from Year 10.
• Try and have an area where you do your revision which doesn’t have any things to distract you.
• Always revise the stuff you don’t like first.
• Don’t just copy notes from a book.
• If you have an exam coming u split the subject into topics and learn each topic per night.
• Revise how you want to: drawing pictures could help you to understand.
• Create shortened versions of your information that you are studying, which includes all the main points.

GCSE Science podcasts for revision and general listening

My daughter got an iPod Touch for Christmas and I have to say I now want one my self. All of her friends have also received ipods and this has made me think about doing some podcasting for downloading onto ipods, as well as the videos I am developing. I am not alone in considering podcasts for my students as this is also a topic in the TES Science forums. I have come across some excellent audio files via the trusty GCSE Bitesize website and, although they do not match exactly with IGCSE, are an excellent resource. Biology, Chemistry and Physics collections are available and they are well presented. They are run by a group lnown as The Naked Scientists and there are further excellent podcasts available from their own website and may be useful for A level students also. Both links are available below (and are also available on my Links page).

Revision GCSE podcasts from the BBC and Naked Scientists

The Naked Scientists Podcasts

Fantastic new A Level revision guides and also IGCSE workbook now available

Every so often I have a wander through Amazon to see what is available. I am amazed at the explosion of textbooks available, particularly for IGCSE. For example I havejust discovered that there is a workbook to match Mary Jones new, and extremely good, textbook. I certainly will be ordering it.
There are more A Level text books also being produced for the new specification, especially two sets of revision guides both of which I recommend. I have created an E-Store that has all the relevant textbooks for Cambridge IGCSE and also Edexcel A Level. I will add other categories for other exam boards soon.
In the meantime please have a browse through my E-Store. If you fancy buying book or two that would be great. The order will go through Amazon and will not affect your purchase price if you go through me. However I do receive a small amount of money for each book purchase through my E-Store (all going towards my daughters college fund). If you can get your school to do bulk orders through me that would be absolutely wonderful!

IGCSE Biology revision video on enzymes

My Year 10 Biology group are all technophiles and love using their computers to revise. Sadly there is very little out there on the net specifically catering for IGCSE. CIE  do do a student site but I haven’t really clicked with it. So I am going to attempt to make a series of videos for IGCSE Biology (Cambridge). Hopefully by next year I will have covered the syllabus. The first one, on enzymes, is shown below. It is approximately 11 minutes long but should just squeeze into the usual, productive attention span.

Link to video hosted on screentoaster is:

http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stU01QRUdIR11fQFVUXFheX1dd

I will be posting the teacher and student PowerPoint versions of the video later (again for free…I must me mad!).