User:Ckazilek/Ask A Biologist

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 Web site 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 10 years, with the assistance of more than 100 volunteer scientists, faculty, and graduate students in biology and related fields.

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

History

 * Ask A Biologist was launched late in 1997 in the School of Life Sciences, with an early verision viewable on the Internet Archive a.k.a. The WayBackMachine. Initially, the site consisted soley 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 Web site 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 Arizona. The Virtual Bird Aviary, included the majoritity of bird species found in the Southwest United States including more than 400 vocal recordings and companion  sonograms, bird images, text descriptions, and range maps.


 * In 2005, the Web site 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 Web site introduced the Mysterious World of Dr. Biology a comic book 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 U with its audio podcast 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  biologists and Pulitzer Prize-winning  authors  Edward O. Wilson and  Bert Hölldobler, as well as physicist and writer  Paul Davies.
 * In 2008, the audio podcast program introduced a co-host contest that offered students in the Phoenix metro area the opportunity to meet and interview working scientists.

Available Content
| Stories about Biology

| Stories about Biologists

| Image Gallery

| Puzzles - Word Search & Crossword

| Coloring Pages

| Mysterious World of Dr. Biology comic book adventure activity

| Audio Podcasts

| Co-host Contest

| Ugly Bug Contest

| Virtual Bird Aviary

| Virtual Pocket Seed Experiment

Awards
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.