Computer based practicals

We might not all have the budget or capacity to do highly involved lab experiments in the classroom, but there’s other areas of genomics that don’t require this type of kit.

Bioinformatics is a rapidly growing area of biology and genomics that centres around data and computational skills, to inform and understand data from experimental research. This lends itself to running bioinformatics based activities in the classroom, which might be much more accessible to many classrooms than experimental activities – some of them don’t even require student computer access!

In the video, we introduce one of our favourite bioinformatics based activities – Function Finders – which can be flexibly delivered as a paper-based or computer-based activity. We’ve also linked some other great computer-based activities below.

Have you tried any bioinformatics or computer based activities with your students? Let us know your favourite activities in the discussion area.

Links:

Function Finders Activities (yourgenome.org): paper based activity to introduce the central dogma

Function Finders BLAST (yourgenome.org): computer based activity to introduce bioinformatics

You vs. Machine (yourgenome.org): interactive highlighting the speed of sequencing

Data Explorer (HHMI): Online activity where students can explore data visualisation

Explore Epigenetics (Webpage): A series of activities around the topic of epigenetics