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ERIC Number: EJ1003677
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-Apr
Pages: 5
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0002-7685
EISSN: N/A
Aliens in the Classroom: Fantastical Creatures as Tools in Teaching Biology
Cruz, Ronald Allan L.
American Biology Teacher, v75 n4 p257-261 Apr 2013
Creatures from science fiction and fantasy can be used to illustrate key concepts and principles in biology. This article describes a project for a university-level general zoology course wherein the students classify, down to at least the phylum level, "animals" from the Alien Species Wiki (2013). This is an online database of creatures from television, film, literature, and games. The primary challenges that the students faced were overly fantastical hybridizations and assigning reality-based classification mechanisms to fictional beings, but the project is a useful exercise in creativity, knowledge of diagnostic characteristics, and the wonder of discovery of new, previously unexplainable physio-morphologies.
University of California Press. 2000 Center Street Suite 303, Berkeley, CA 94704. Tel: 510-643-7154; Fax: 510-642-9917; e-mail: customerservice@ucpressjournals.com; Web site: http://www.ucpressjournals.com/journal.php?j=abt
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A