Discover Your Inner Scientist: Peer Teaching and Project-Based Learning on Microbes
Channel: Dr. Seth Bordenstein
Date: 2013-05-01

What happens when students teach project-based learning to other students? These five high schools seniors behind WIN (Wolbachia in Nashville, https://sites.google.com/site/thewolbachiaproject) wanted to find out and their experience was stunning. For them, they become education role models to other students; for the freshmen and sophomore students, comfortability sprouts with the shrinking of the gap between the classroom and the teacher. This is the story of how WIN did it all this past spring with the Wolbachia Project. 

Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project (http://discover.mbl.edu) is an integrative lab series designed to bring real-world scientific research into high school biology classes through inquiry, discovery, biotechnology, and a culture of excellence. Its goals are to engage high school students in nature and real-world research and contribute new scientific data on bacterial endosymbionts (Wolbachia). Wolbachia in Nashville or WIN for short is using the Wolbachia Project as a springboard for implementing this research in Metropolitan Nashville Public High Schools. 

TEAM PARTNERS

Students: School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt (http://theschool.vanderbilt.edu) and John Overton High School

Overton High Teacher: Mr. Adam Taylor (http://2footgiraffe.wordpress.com)

Director of School for Science & Math: Dr. Angela Eeds (http://theschool.vanderbilt.edu/people/eeds.php)

Experts for Wolbachia Project: Dr. Seth Bordenstein, Professor of Biological Sciences and Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University (http://bordensteinlab.vanderbilt.edu), Sarah Bordenstein and Lisa Funkhouser.

Video editing in iMovie by Seth Bordenstein