Ask A Biologist - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Ask A Biologist is a science outreach program originating from Arizona State University's School of Life Sciences.

About the program

Ask A Biologist is a pre-kindergarten through high school program dedicated to answering questions from students, their teachers, and parents. The primary focus of the program is to connect students and teachers with working scientists through a question and answer Web e-mail form. The companion website also includes a large collection of free content and activities that can be used inside, as well as outside, of the classroom. The award winning program has been continuously running for more than 14 years, with the assistance of more than 150 volunteer scientists, faculty, and graduate students in biology and related fields. In 2010 the program released its new website interface and features that became the subject for articles in the journals
Science

Science (journal)

Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....

and
PLoS Biology

PLoS Biology

PLoS Biology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. Publication began on October 13, 2003.It was the first journal of the Public Library of Science. All content in PLoS Biology is published under the Creative Commons "by-attribution" license...

Primary audience

Ask A Biologist materials are free and open to anyone with access to the World-Wide-Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

. The question portion of the program serves primarily students, grades preK-12, as well as their teachers and parents. In addition, life-long learners are encouraged to use the website materials.

History

Ask A Biologist was launched late in 1997 in the School of Life Sciences, with an early version viewable on the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

a.k.a. The WayBackMachine. Initially, the site consisted solely of a question submission form, a feature that remains one of its core activities.

By 2001, the site had grown to over 1,000 pages of content, including articles about current research, profiles of scientists, an image gallery, mystery images, puzzles, coloring pages, quizzes, and science activities.

In 2003, the website released the Virtual Pocket Seed Experiment, the first of several data sets that could be used in and outside of the classroom. The experiment was based on the classic seed germination experiment, but included the feature of time-lapse animation of various seed experiments.

In 2004, a second data set was released, in cooperation with Audubon
Audubon International
Audubon International is a not for profit 501 environmental education organization based in Selkirk, New York. Established in 1987, the organization has helped thousands of developments, hotels and golf courses in 30 countries to advertise and promote their "green" consciousness...

Arizona. The Virtual Bird Aviary, included the majority of bird species found in the Southwest United States including more than 400 vocal recordings and companion sonograms
Spectrogram
A spectrogram is a time-varying spectral representation that shows how the spectral density of a signal varies with time. Also known as spectral waterfalls, sonograms, voiceprints, or voicegrams, spectrograms are used to identify phonetic sounds, to analyse the cries of animals; they were also...

, bird images, text descriptions, and range maps.

In 2005, the website was peer reviewed by the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT), earning a "five out of five star" rating .

In 2006, the website introduced the Mysterious World of Dr. Biology a comic book
Comics in education
The use of comics in education is based on the concept of creating engagement and motivation for students. The effectiveness of comics as medium for effective learning and development has been the subject of debate since the origin modern comic book in the 1930s...

adventure. The activity encouraged students to piece together a mystery. Students reconstructed a chain of events in the Dr. Biology laboratory and field site, writing their own narrative for the story.
Early in 2007, Ask A Biologist became one of the early content channels on iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

U with its audio podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...

of the same name. Hosted by Dr. Biology, the program was soon listed as one of five great courses by Macworld . Some of the guest scientists interviewed on the show included biologist
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...

s and Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

-winning authors Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler
Bert Hölldobler
Bert Hölldobler is a German behavioral biologist and Sociobiologist whose primary study subjects are social insects and in particular ants. He is a co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his work on The Ants with Edward O. Wilson...

, as well as physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

Paul Davies
Paul Davies
Paul Charles William Davies, AM is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, currently a professor at Arizona State University as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science...

.

In 2008, the audio podcast program introduced a co-host contest that offered students in the Phoenix
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...

metro area the opportunity to meet and interview working scientists.

In 2009 the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

(NSF) funds the redesign of the Ask A Biologist website including the addition of Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...

tools as part of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL).

In 2010 Ask A Biologist releases its new website developed using a Web content management tool Drupal
Drupal
Drupal is a free and open-source content management system and content management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1.5% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and...

and adding Web 2.0 options. The new content management expands website features including translations of content into French and Spanish and an improved interface for audio streaming. The website is officially accessioned by the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) in September.

In 2011 two new sections are added to the website. Body Depot is a collaborative project with the Arizona Science Center
Arizona Science Center
Arizona Science Center is focused on inspiring, educating, and entertaining people about science. The Center is located in Heritage and Science Park in the heart of downtown Phoenix. Home to over 350 permanent hands-on exhibits, the Center is able to provide their 400,000 annual visitors with...

funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). PLoSable is project that links plain language and kid-friendly reviews to primary source publications in journals of the Public Library of Science
Public Library of Science
The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under an open content license...

.

Available content

Awards

2010 Science

Science (journal)

Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....

Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS

American Association for the Advancement of Science

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...

) .

2008 Silver Quill Award of Excellence. International Association of Business Communicators Southern Region .

2004 Digital Education Achievement Award. The Center for Digital Education .

2004 Exemplary Web Site Award. Arizona Technology in Education Alliance .

2003 President’s Award for Innovation. Arizona State University .

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.