Workshops & Summer Programs
Extra Spooky Return-to-Campus
October 29th, 2005
Costume Contest: In an effort to make this RTC the spookiest RTC ever, we have decided to hold a Costume Contest. Categories will include Scariest, Funniest, and Most Biologically Relevant. The costume pageant and voting will occur at lunch, and winners will be announced before the garage sale. So come to the RTC dressed up in your spookiest getup!
Bring Your Students: We are encouraging you to bring up to two of your students to RTC. We will have a fun-filled (and educational) program for them (see below for schedule). Since our program will include both talks and a talk about selecting a college, it may not be appropriate for elementary and intermediate students. Students will be able to sign up for activities during registration.
Parking: We recommend parking behind the Biotech Building on Cornell campus (see map). This is because, even though breakfast and registration will be in Goldwin Smith, the Garage Sale will be in Biotech and we don't want you to have to carry your goodies too far. We will also have a guide set up in the lobby of the Biotech building that can direct you to Goldwin Smith Hall.
Student Schedule of Activities
| 8:30 - 9:00 | Registration and Activity Sign-up |
| 9:00 - 9:30 | Opening Comments |
| 9:30 - 10:45 | Morning Talk: Evolution and Intelligent Design Will Provine Notes |
| 10:45 - 12:00 | Info Session from Cornell Admissions |
| 12:00 - 12:45 | Lunch |
| 1:00 - 2:15 | Afternoon Activity |
| 2:15 - 3:30 | Afternoon Talk: The Microbial Earth: More than 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Served Dan Buckley Notes |
Descriptions of Student Activities
- The Holey Cow
The rumen of a cow contains one of the most complex combinations of single celled organisms in the world. The rumen can be studied through a special hole in the cow's stomach (called a fistula). Come experience one of Cornell's "holey" cows! - Cornell's Ice-cream Facility Tour
Ever make ice-cream at home? Ever make it for 20,000 people? Find out how Cornell turns milk and sugar into one of our favorite treats in this fun activity.
Teacher Schedule of Activities
| 8:30 - 9:00 | Registration and Refreshments |
| 9:00 - 9:30 | Opening Comments |
| 9:30 - 10:45 | Morning Talk: Evolution and Intelligent Design Will Provine Notes |
| 10:45 - 12:00 | Session 1 (See below for activities) |
| 12:00 - 12:45 | Lunch and Costume Contest Voting |
| 1:00 - 2:15 | Session 2 (See below for activities) |
| 2:15 - 3:30 | Afternoon Talk: The Microbial Earth: More than 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Served Dan Buckley Notes |
| 3:30 | Costume Contest Awards, followed by Garage Sale |
Descriptions of Teacher Activities
Session 1 Activities:
- Fabric and Fibers
Participants will work with ITS (In-Touch Science) modules to investigate and learn about polymers and fibers. We will examine sheep wool and see what it looks like under microscopes. We will then take the wool and make felt. We will also examine polymers and make some simple ones that work well in the classroom.
Presented by Paul Reed
Polymers and You - Tales from the Crypt
In this lab, students visit a graveyard to gather age-specific mortality data for a human population that lived at an earlier time, preferably before 1900. The students also gather similar information for a comparable modern population from the obituary pages of a local newspaper and construct life tables for males and for females in each of these populations. The survivorship schedules are also presented in graphical form. Life tables and survivorship curves summarize the likelihood of death at various points in an organism's life history.
The students are asked to propose hypotheses concerning comparisons of survivorship in historical versus modern populations and comparisons between males and females. Students also discuss the results of the life table study in the light of the a priori hypotheses they formulated, under inclusion of "ecological" factors that may have caused observed differences.
Presented by Mike Yerky
Tales from the Crypt - Female Reproductive Tract Dissection
In this activity developed by CIBT, participants in this workshop will dissect a pregnant reproductive tract of a cow and make comparisons between human and bovine anatomy. We will also cover fetal development and the menstrual cycle in these labs.
Presented by Nancy Wright
The latest version of this lab is available in the Lab Database. - Web-Based Neurobiology Tutorial
We are designing web-based tutorials for teaching signal transmission in the nervous system. The tutorials are investigative with activities that simulate both classical and state of the art experimental techniques to demonstrate principles of neuronal communication. The first set of tutorials address synaptic transmission. We are looking for feedback from teachers that would help make the tutorials appropriate for Honors and AP Biology.
Presented by Bruce Johnson, Jon Glase, and Brendan Holt
Session 2 Activities:
- The Tell Tale Heart
The Tell Tale Heart is an activity during which students familiarize themselves with the structure of the heart. They locate the atria, ventricles, and major blood vessels. Through "surgical" procedures, students perform coronary bypass surgery and correct patent ductus arteriosus. Human and dog hearts are compared in terms of common structure and defects.
Presented by Laurel Southard - The Teeth Kit
In this session, suitable for grades 2-7, Paul Reed will show off CIBT's Teeth Kit, with which students can investigate the characteristics of teeth and what teeth can tell about an animal's lifestyle. This kit includes 10 teeth for students to sort and analyze. Students will also be able to make predictions as to what sort of animal the teeth came from. The unit will conclude with a study of jaws from carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. Based on the teeth structure, students will hypothesize which jaws belong to which type of animal.
Presented by Paul Reed
Teeth Unit - Evolving Trees
This exercise introduces the basic methods of phylogenetic analysis. Students are asked to hypothesize the evolutionary relationships of groups of organisms and to become familiar with the methods for building evolutionary trees using the basic principles of taxonomy and classification. We will then compare "traditional" classification based on physical characteristics with more recent molecular techniques.
Presented by Bob Suran
PowerPoint presentation
Evolving Trees (student section)
Evolving Trees (teacher section)
Molecular Evolving Trees
