Australia's Science Forum

Hey guys (my gurus!)

I've been asked to do a display for biodiversity month & am looking for some ideas....

We only have limited biological samples unfortunately (& hence me asking you guys!)

Much karma to everyone

Cheers Kel

A shopping trip to Melbourne..no I mean a visit to the Melbourne museum, OK ..thats out but you could ource a few ideas......
http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournem ... dio-trail/
or
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/

amanda

The NSW Dept of Environment has a pretty cool teaching resource for biodiversity. The focus seems to be on ecosystems and inter-dependence between species. We have set up things in the past like little laminated photos of the species in an ecosystem, and the kids have to arrange them into a food web. Using photos/pictures means you can include micro-organisms etc. Then we ask them to identify all the organisms that are affected if one species is removed. Usually, it turns out to be everything else that's affected. I've also done the same thing with seed pods, bunches of grass etc, and little plastic animals, and made something like the good old diorama.

There's also the notion of diversity within a species, and how that could be good/bad/indifferent. Even something like a display of a bunch of different potato or sweet potato types, some samples of different types of wheat & related grains to show that we don't need a monochromatic wheat variety.

Hope that's useful.

Wow thanks guys! See you just proved my guru comment right!!

Will put the thinking cap on over the weekend & set up next week. I'm loving your ideas & website directions though.

Any others are still more than welcome - there's enough karma to go around.

Kel

ask the seniors to set the display.....give the power to the students