Poster: Education & outreach
Abs #
925: Images of plant cell biology on CD-ROM: information for students and a resource for teachers
The aim of this project was to develop a versatile user interface for presenting detailed pictorial information on plant cell biology in CD format, for use by students and teachers at all levels. Details are available at www.plantcellbiologyonCD.com. “Part 1”, now available, contains >1000 images mostly derived from research programs, organised as an Introduction to Plant Cells (100 screens surveying cells, organelles, and imaging), Mitochondria (61 screens - morphology, ultrastructure, specialisations, origin, movies showing pleiomorphy, fission, fusion), Peroxisomes (26 screens showing ultrastructure and confocal images of GFP labelling, and Plastids (468 screens covering all categories of plastid and their division and origins; the large chloroplast section includes morphology (algal groups to angiosperms), mesophyll, thylakoids, sub-structure and complexities of granum architecture, envelope, DNA, ribosomes, rubisco, pyrenoids, starch, other inclusions, C4 specialisations, and many movies of stromules and positioning and movement of chloroplasts). Light and electron micrographs of many types are included, plus anaglyph stereos, confocal animations, static and animated diagrams. Live cell phenomena which few biology students can experience directly are highlighted by inclusion of nearly 100 time-lapse movies. Topics can be studied systematically (progress monitoring is provided) or by browsing via comprehensive navigation facilities. The CD is not a textbook, but concise, referenced text essays introduce many topics and all images have labels and captions. To facilitate use in tutorials and other presentations a built-in recorder allows sequences of screens to be pre-selected for subsequent display as in a slide-show. Sequences are preserved as text files for re-use.
