Josh Riphagen has been hired to teach biotechnology to 4th through 8th graders in Sioux, Osceola, Woodbury, Sac, Plymouth, Crawford, Cherokee, Clay, and Buena Vista counties during the 1997-98 school year. During the current school year, Riphagen will spend a minimum of one week at a school in each of the nine counties. He will provide biotechnology instruction and hands-on lab activities for the students using a new curriculum developed by ISU Extension's Biotechnology Team. While he is working with their classes, Riphagen will help the northwest Iowa educators update their molecular biology skills so they can teach the biotechnology lessons to future classes. The curriculum Riphagen is using is available at county extension offices to teachers throughout the state.
Teachers can borrow similar equipment from area education offices throughout Iowa.
With the addition of Biology 202 to the spring semester on-line courses available through Project BIO, high school students planning to major in a basic or applied life science can now take a full year of college freshman biology while in high school. Course participants access multimedia lectures from the Project BIO web site. HTML format that is readable by any World Wide Web browser will be used to deliver the text and image portions of the lectures. The World Wide Web browser and RealAudio software is free of charge and can be downloaded from the Internet. Those enrolled in the course will ask questions and participate in class discussions via e-mail and interactive web pages.