Sunday, January 13, 2013

Learning Genetics

EDUtutorials :: The University of Utah has an awesome website called, Learn. Genetics. It is like an interactive textbook and even includes experiments students can try in the classroom or at home - like - How to Extract DNA from Anything Living. In fact, this experiment caught my eye on Twitter and is how I found this website in the first place.

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/
There is a lot of information on the page, and the beginner's material is a good way of preparing for more advanced material you might find from online open-university projects like those at Yale, MIT or Berkeley, as well as infinitely more complicated material to be found on websites like those of Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) or Applied Biosystems (AB) who offer a wealth of information regarding their products and services - and from that you can learn a great deal more about genetics and the modern methods of bioengineering.

I would suggest starting with "Tour of the Basics" and continue on from there. There is also a Teach. Genetics page the university is working on, but I don't think it would take much effort to walk students through the material found on Learn.Genetics.

The idea of having an "online textbook" like this that can be updated on a day-to-day basis and is accessible to all is truly a revolutionary idea that has potential across all fields of study. It's something we might think of doing as time goes on as well.

Hope this helps. Enjoy! If you have a favorite educational resource you would like to share - contact Helios Labs and we'll be glad to feature it.
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