Despite the obvious devastation to our global society, the Covid-19 pandemic has produced some excellent teaching resources for biologists to use when teaching disease and immunity topics, and general scientific skills lessons. Clearly, this will need to be done with great sensitivity in coming years, as many students may have lost someone close to them. Some of these resources are genuinely excellent, and some are incredibly useful examples of bad science. I’m going to attempt to collect them all together, and add to this post with further examples.
Independent Research Task:
I have already written a research task for A-level Biology students on another blog post: https://pedagoggles.wordpress.com/2020/04/02/covid19-research-task-for-a-level-biologists/
The Effects of Covid-19 on the Human Body:
This excellent graphic (above) can be downloaded in various forms from Azuravesta Design: https://www.azuravesta.com/covid-19-pandemic
National Geographic article: https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2020/02/heres-what-coronavirus-does-body/amp?__twitter_impression=true
Testing for Covid-19:
Another fantastic infographic from Compound Chem: https://www.compoundchem.com/2020/03/19/covid-19-testing/
Graphs:
Here are some interesting graphs to look at. Can students spot any issues with them? Can they re-draw them with appropriate scales?
This graph (below) would make a lovely graph for A-level Biology students to think about. Useful questions to ask: 1) why is the data given on a log scale? 2) why is the data given per capita (and what this means) 3) converting to/from log number of people
Exam Questions:
@zephwright found this useful exam questions about how the test for COVID-19 works Q8 Paper 2 2017 (AQA)
https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2017/june/AQA-74022-QP-JUN17.PDF
Bad Science:
Donald Trump explaining why one of the reasons we have a pandemic is due to antibiotic resistance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llL_9dLKb3c
Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, gets muddled between microbes and antibodies:
Questions to ask students:an you explain what the Health Secretary has got muddled in his statement? Could you write to him and explain the difference between antibodies and microbes?
Pedagoggles 