I'm a little bit behind starting up the DonorsChoose challenge, but I've finally got everything set up and ready to go. In case you haven't heard the buzz already, ScienceBloggers are banding together to raise money for classrooms across the United States so that elementary school children can get a good science education. If you'll look at the sidebar, you'll see a little module tracking my "Digging Deep for Science" Challenge, which will track the projects I want to help fund this month.
For my set of challenges I have decided to stick with a particular theme; anatomy. There are many teachers who are in need of skeletons, specimens, tools, and other supplies to teach their students how animals are put together. Skeletons and animals for dissection are expensive, however, and these schools (many of which are in high poverty areas) need your help to get this materials into the hands of curious students. Looking at a poster of a skeleton is not the same as being able to pick up bones or dissect a frog and see if has the same basic skeletal architecture as we do, and I really hope that you'll be able to spare a little bit to help these children learn about science.
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There are companies which supply owl pellets. These contain a complete skeleton of some small mammal. Information is provided so the student can identify which small mammal. I think these are relatively inexpensive and would be appropriate for students at jr. high on up.
Good choices! I have to say, when I taught anatomy, there was absolutely no substitute for giving students bones to handle and fit together. It's not something you can replace with a web-based tutorial. I have a skeleton challenge in my challenge too - but it's for an art class to learn to draw the human figure (and I have this fantasy that maybe the biology classrooms and art classrooms can share!)
Thanks, Jessica! I know that working with real bones made a major impression on me (much more exciting then web tutorials and posters), so I thought I would run with that theme. It would be nice if the art and bio classes collaborated, though; being able to draw the bones you see is an important skill! Not everyone can be an artist, but it's still important to know how to draw if you want to learn anatomy.
I've published three drawings of fish bones. One was a drawing of killifish pharyngeal teeth, well done by a talented undergraduate biology student. Second was a drawing of caudal fin skeleton done by a person who has some drawings in Grey's Anatomy. She did not understand what she was seeing and I had to modify the drawings a little to show what was there. The third was of killifish pharyngeal apparatus by a biology student who was a talented artist. I just didn't like the drawing either for style or accuracy, so published my own drawing. There is a convetion for drawing fish skulls which specifies the kinds of shading for bones not completely on the outside of the skull. If you know the convention, you can interpet a two dimensional skull drawing almost in 3-D.