Bioeyes at Notre Dame

In my never-ending quest to prove teachers do not “have the summer off”, I have spent the week in labs at Notre Dame’s Jordan Hall of Science learning about embryonic development and genetics in zebra fish.  The goal is to borrow the equipment from Notre Dame and bring the lab activities to my sixth grade science students next spring.   The only words to describe the week are “WAY COOL!” 

While I really enjoyed using all the snazzy equipment and watching the embryos develop, one of the best parts of the week was being captivated by the presenter.  There were actually many presenters but the one who guided us through the zebra fish labs, DS, was AMAZING.  It didn’t matter what she was telling us, her energy, sense of humor, and enthusiasm made you want to listen.  “We’re going to pippette fish poop!”  “YAYHOO DS, I wanna go first!”  And, unlike many inservices/trainings/seminars/classes I’ve attended, I did not once hypothesize as to how many times it would take dragging the Bic pen cap across my wrists to slit them.  In fact, I walked away from this week a little slower than I usually do.  I’ll miss you DS.  Hope our paths cross again.

I also got to work with an amazing lab partner which rarely happens.  Last year I had to partner with a woman (for two looong agonizing weeks) who made it perfectly clear that she resented me because I worked at the Academy (translated by her into “they get everything and take all the smart kids and I teach with crap”).  Yep, she actually said it.  On the first day.  Comfy fortnight that was!  Or I get stuck with the teacher who either does nothing, has no sense of humor, and whines or the one who hogs everything and won’t shut up during the final presentation because no one has anything more important to say than she does.  Yes, I’m scarred.  Playing nice with other grown-ups is a skill I’m still working on!  But back to the cool lab partner…..she just got hired to teach at my school, in my grade level, the same subjects I teach!  She’s fun and competent and creative (sigh)!  What a great hiring decision Madam Principal!

But back to the fish……….We have a great document camera in the science lab I teach in and I learned how to line it up with the microscope eyepiece so I could display the image from a slide onto the large screen or tv.  Remembering that, I showed my lab partner how we could use the digital cameras to focus through the eyepieces and take pictures and video of what we were seeing.  So for your viewing pleasure, here are some of the pictures taken this week.  (I tried to upload the video of a twitching embryo but I haven’t figured out how to save it in an acceptable format yet.)

On the first day, we selected our cross of fish to breed.  Here are Fred and Ethel:

After lowering the lights and playing some romantic mood music……….nothing happened.  I don’t believe Ehtel (albino female) was terribly interested in the ever-so-eager Fred (hetero wild….aren’t they all).  But in the morning, low and behold…………fertilized eggs.  It’s my firm belief that Ethel gave in just to shut him up.

 I won’t bore you with pictures of us sucking fish poop or bad eggs (I’ll just let your minds run with that one!).  

The cool thing about zebra fish is that they develop quickly.  The students can use them to learn everything from embryonic stages to genetics in a very short amount of time by studying them.   So by day three, some of our 138 eggs (Ethel seems to have pelted Fred with eggs when he wouldn’t take no for an answer) were twitching with life.

    

Both of these embryos are Albino and the size of a straight pin head.  The large circle in the middle is the yolk and that will get smaller as the embryos develop.  By day four, a few had hatched.  See, WAY COOL!

I can’t wait to spend a week doing this with my students!  If you are interested in learning more about the BioEyes program, they have a great website:  http://www.jefferson.edu/bioeyes/  It takes a minute to do its thing but there is no special password or login.  Once it loads, you can click on “teacher entry” then scroll down to curriculum.  Clicking on the grade levels you’re interested in will take you to links to pdf’s of the curriculum!  Anyone with a microscope, medicine dropper, and a local pet store can conduct many of these activities. 

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Tags: BioEyes, curriculum, eggs, embryos, home school, microscope, Notre Dame, science, teacher, zebra fish