168

M o n i t o r

CHARLES F A BRYCE

Department of Biological Sciences Napier Polytechnic Edinburgh, Scotland

Barker, M and Carr M Teaching and Learning about Photosyn- thesis. Part 1: An Assessment in Terms of Students' Prior Knowledge. Int J Sci Education 11, 49-56 (1989)

Three discrete teaching strategies are considered for the topic of photosynthesis, the guided discovery strategy, the element analysis strategy and the meaning of plant food strategy. The first of these involves students principally testing for starch in leaves to identify this as a product of photosynthesis. The second approach concentrates on testing for the presence of a variety of elements and deals with the notion of reactants and products and with the concept of stoichiometry. The final strategy develops from the student accepting the view that the plant food is produced within the plant itself and not absorbed. For all three approaches a variety of conceptual difficulties are identified and enunciated along with practical or theoretical problems. It is concluded that none of the three approaches adequately pro- motes the central issue of photosynthesis, namely the production of carbohydrate, and are therefore inappropriate teaching strategies. The authors suggest that the teaching and learning about photosynthesis could benefit from a sharper focus on the production of carbohydrate material and this has resulted in a novel strategy which is to be reported in a future article.

[Department of Biology, Hamilton Teachers' College, Hamil- ton, New Zealand]

Cox, F E GMolecular Biology in Schools, Higher Education, and Afterwards. J Biol Education, 23, 9-11 (1989)

The messages contained in this article might best be targetted at school pupils, teachers and careers advisers. The author ident- ifies manpower shortages at all levels in the area of molecular biology. Because of the perceived low profile given to this topic in schools, the author suggests divorcing this element of the curriculum from biochemical metabolism and classical genetics in order that it might be studied as a distinct and coherent topic. To develop the economic perspective he argues that an overview of recombinant DNA technology be included. In higher edu- cation he advises applicants to undertake a great deal of research to identify successful courses majoring in molecular biology undertaken at strong academic departments with expertise in the subject and a good research tradition. From an analysis of job vacancies there are clearly many opportunities for individuals trained in molecular biology, although many employers are looking for graduates with post-graduate experience. The author comments on the low salary levels for posts in molecular biology compared with other subject disciplines and to the fact that few posts are long-term or permanent. These disadvantages in terms of career satisfaction may disappear with the growth and expansion of the pharmaceutical industry and novel biotechno- logical companies.

[Department of Biophysics, Cell Molecular Biology, King's College, London W8 7AH, UK]

Hughes, I Affordable Molecular Graphics Education in Chem- istry 26, 19-21 (1989)

There has been a considerable increase in the number of molecular graphics software packages available for a variety of microcomputer and minicomputer systems. The package described in this article, called Molgram, is targetted specifically at the low-cost end of this market and is designed for the Sinclair Spectrum with 48K of memory and either tape or disk storage.

The screen resolution is 256 x 176 pixels and gives a 250 atom upper limit on the type of molecule that can be displayed. The display is monochrome with different types of atoms represented by a range of shading patterns. The program is written in part in BASIC with a number of subroutines written in machine code, the latter being for steps that require considerable computation and which would therefore otherwise be too time demanding. The program is menu-d•en and is available from the author as a tape or disk (Opus Discovery) copy for a small handling charge. Three display modes are possible, the bond-only mode, a space-filling mode and a ball and stick mode and a Copy facility allows a printout of the current display, either as a standard screendump or as a double size copy. Examples of the printout are given for the active site region of thermolysin in space-filling mode together with a bond only representation with the zinc ion highlighted as a shaded circle. Other facilities include move, rotate, animate, zoom and film. The latter allows a molecule to be rotated, the new 3D coordinates to be stored and the individual frames redisplayed and filmed at speeds ranging from 0.4 sec/frame to 2 sec/frame depending on the display mode.

[37 Church Walk, Sawbridgeworth, Herts CM21 9B J, UK]

Riggs, A Biotechnology -- a New Challenge for School Chem- istry. Education in Chemistry, 26, 40 (1989)

It is argued that any curriculum material in biotechnology used in schools should give a realistic picture of the research, development and the manufacturing process involved. It should emphasise the interdisciplinary input into the area and should also highlight the associated economic, industrial and social implications. Several areas in conventional biology and chem- istry syllabi are identified as offering a biotechnology slant. In the second half of the article, the author describes the Bio- technology Bus which has, since 1987, proved to be a very effective means of developing awareness of biotechnology in schools. It is a bus used to provide in-service training for teachers. It is fitted as a laboratory with gas and water supply and 240 volt power points and provides laboratory facilities for up to 12 teachers. The bus travels to agreed venues (bookable through the University of Surrey: details provided in the article) and during a day's course teachers are able to examine most of the resources currently available including curricular material, textbooks, videos, slides, specialist equipment, kits and in- dustrially produced material. Practical work is designed for the type of equipment available in most schools and tends to employ a problem-solving approach.

[Department of Educational Studies (Block AA), University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 5XH, UK]

Robinson, T Making Stereo Pair Views with Molecular Editor. J Chem Education 66, A62 (1989).

The program Molecular Editor is commercially available for use with Macintosh computers. It is an easy to use and inexpensive program for building, rotating and observing molecular struc- tures in three dimensions. The author describes an additional capability for the software, namely the ability to generate stereo pair views of specified molecules. He describes a step-by-step procedure for this process which involves fitting the molecular model into one half of the screen, copying the model in situ, shifting the copy to the side of the original model such that the space between them corresponds to about 6 crn and then rotating the copy 5* around the Y-axis. The resultant stereo pair can be viewed using either a stereo viewer or by defocussing the eyes to yield a single, three-dimensional model in the centre of the screen. Alternatively, the frame can be printed as a hard copy.

[Department of Biochemistry, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA]

B I O C H E M I C A L E D U C A T I O N 17(3) 1989