Exploratorium Digital Teaching Boxes

A Professional Development Tool for Teaching Biomedical Research

For almost 20 years, the Teacher Institute has supported middle and high school science teachers in assembling “teaching boxes,” helping them to collect lessons, activities, assessments, and inexpensive supplies for a specific science unit into a single box. Now, with the support of a NIH Science Education Partnership Award, the Exploratorium will bring the teaching box into the digital age by working with teachers and scientists to create research-based, NGSS-ready virtual teaching boxes that support biomedical and life sciences teaching.

Teacher Institute staff, teacher participants, and research scientists will select and create the building blocks of a virtual teaching box: data sets, microscope images and videos, classroom activities, videotaped lectures by and interviews with scientists, webcasts, podcasts, teaching tips, texts, and tutorials for hands-on classroom activities. These resources will be made freely available to teachers, everywhere, to use as they create their own virtual teaching boxes. (Explore our Microscope Imaging Station for teaching and investigating the biomedical sciences.)

Cell Biology Teaching Box

Cells aren’t just the basis of life; they’re the basis of biology learning.

Cellular Energy Teaching Box

Humans haven’t yet figured out how to turn energy from the sun into chemical energy, or how to use that energy to support life—but producers have.

Homeostasis and the Characteristics of Life Teaching Box

What is life, and how is life maintained?

Teaching Box: Is There Life on Mars (Or Anywhere Else)?

The hunt for life in other parts of the universe is on—but how are scientists going about it, and what does it mean to discover life, anyway?

Meiosis and Biological Sex Teaching Box

Let’s talk about sex—the biological concept and the processes that determine it.

Genetics Teaching Box

This Digital Teaching Box contains resources for teaching introductory genetics.

This work was supported by the Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health under Science Education Partnership Award Number R25OD016525. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.