Content Videos (Lectures and animations to supplement lessons):
- Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others: Keystone Species and Trophic Cascades
- Dead Stuff: The Secret Ingredient in our Food Chain
- Ecosystems, Biodiversity, Communities, Populations
- Population Sampling Techniques (i.e. Tigers)
Interactives (Online activities for student interaction & practice with content):
- Carbon TIME Ecosystems Simulations (These simulations focus on processes that transform matter and energy in organisms, ecosystems, and global systems: combustion, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, digestion, and biosynthesis. Students use these cellular and chemical processes to explain the functioning of organisms – plants, animals, decomposers – as well as ecological and global carbon cycling)
- Sunny Meadows (Students use the online Meadow Simulation to observe changes in biomass of the producer, herbivore, and carnivore populations over a 100-year period)
- Constant Flux (Students are introduced to the idea that all living and decomposing things are part of the organic carbon pool. Carbon moves into the organic pool through the process of photosynthesis and out of the organic pool through the process of cellular respiration or combustion. Students are also introduced to the idea of flux – the rate at which a process occurs.)
- Ecosystems (animated lesson on ecosystems)
- Food Chains (animated lesson on food chains)
- Food Webs (animated lesson on food webs)
- Food Webs (students create their own food web, choose from Australian or African Grasslands, Antarctic or Marine)
- Aquatic Ecosystems (animated lesson on aquatic ecosystems)
- Biomes (animated lesson on biomes)
- Changes in Ecosystems (animated lesson on changes in ecosystems)
- Animated Ecology Lessons (Symbiosis, Water/Carbon Cycle, Population Growth)
- Keystone species (animated lesson on the Strangler Fig)
- Decomposition, The Nitrogen Cycle and The Carbon Cycle (animated lesson on these cycles)
- Virtual Water Monitoring (animated virtual field trip that takes place in Corkey, Ireland. Students travel to various sites (mountain, woodland, farm, reservoir, wastewater treatment plant and an estuary) and perform water testing for pH, turbidity, nitrates, phosphates and bioindicators. Well made & Good fun!!)
Games (Online games for students to apply & test their content knowledge):
- Analyzing an Ecosystem (students identify abiotic/biotic, producer/consumer and mimcry elements of an ecosystem)
- Build-a-Prairie (students attempt to restore a prairie ecosystem- requires knowledge of biology, ecology, climatology, and even economics!)
- Island Ecosystem (students drag and drop fish to their pelagic habitat)
- Rainforest Ecosystem (A game putting together a simple food system – balance the numbers of primary producers and consumers)
- Word Scramble (students read ecology term definitions and unscramble the vocabulary word)
- Eco-detectives (The Peril River Watershed is in trouble! Students use their scientific reasoning and analytical skills to figure out who is damaging the river, and how to fix it! Also, students learn about eutrophication, biomagnification, dissolved oxygen, pH, and the effects of pesticides! Includes graphing and interpretation of data!)
- Angry Aliens: Ecology (Angry aliens are invading earth! Students must shoot the invaders while teaching them a thing or two about ecology! This review game allows students to have a blast while reviewing important ecology vocabulary!)
- Food Web Game (students drag-and-drop to construct a marine food web)
- Sunny Meadows (students play foxes versus rabbits in this food chain game)
- Chain Reaction (students put together food chains for the forest and the arctic)
- Food Web Kerplunk (a game about species relationships. Students play as a town council member in suburban California and try to preserve the wildlife in a patch of native chaparral, against the pressures of town growth)