Interactive Cloning Website

While reading the TechLEARNing.com blog I learned about the Click and Clone website at the University of Utah's Genetic Science Learning Center. At this highly interactive site, you'll click on animated drawings of Mimi the mouse, petri dishes, cells, and others as you proceed through a six step process to create a "Mini Mimi." This site reminds me a lot of Brain Pop.

There are lots of great vocabulary words like enucleated and somatic cell. The whole process takes only a few minutes and is based on actual research conducted at the University of Hawaii in 1998.

I then browsed the Michigan Curriculum Framework using MI CLiMB (available online at www.miclimb.net) and discovered this suggested assessment and extension for a lesson on cloning:

Assessment Example
With a partner, students will write a story in which a student becomes a nitrogen base. Each pair of students will explain the events, step by step, that happen to the student (nitrogen base) from the beginning to the end of DNA replication. Each pair of students will use their knowledge of this scientific process and appropriate scientific vocabulary in the story.

Extension:
1. Research cloning and present a speech explaining reasons for or against human cloning.
2. Research gene manipulation and present a speech explaining reasons for or against gene manipulation.)

There are even a few videos on unitedstreaming that could be used to further explain the cloning process.