This site provides a text overview of the life cycle of Plasmodium falciparum along with a six part Flash animation illustrating the various stages of the life cycle. It includes an audio option that allows the student to listen to the text explanations.
Type of Material:
Adobe Macromedia Flash Animation
Recommended Uses:
Lecture presentation supplement and student self-study.
Technical Requirements:
Flash Player and a plugin capable browser such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
To aid understanding of the complex life cycle of Plasmodium falciparum and the medical importance of this knowledge.
Target Student Population:
Listed for college general education, but would also serve well for high school biology.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
General knowledge of cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, single-celled organisms, and cell reproduction. Knowledge of taxonomy including species definitions and binomial nomenclature would be useful.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
High quality animation
Factually acurate
Important medical topic, can also be used in ecology section to demonstrate ecto and endoparasitism.
Content is well presented, accurate, and appropriate for general life science courses.
Concerns:
Text would benefit by identifying which steps of life cycle are haploid (1n) and diploid (2n), and where mitosis and meiosis occur.
More information on the health consequences of malaria would also help engage students.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
Visually illustrates a complex parasitic life cycle
Could be used to discuss both an ectoparasite (mosquito) and endoparasite (plasmodium)
The animations are simple and clear.
Visual enlargement of components as they occur in the life cycle is instructive. Each of the steps can be viewed individually and repeated as desired. This makes it quite easy to include as a lecture supplement for instructors, and it would allow students to pace their study. I happened to be covering this topic in general zoology when I started this review. Thus, I gave the animation a trial run in my class and found that it worked well. Students reported that it helped them better understand text and illustrations in their lab book.
Concerns:
Not very interactive or engaging for students
No assessment developed
Lots of complex terms, without much explanation of what they mean, a glossary breaking down words like sporozoite would help.
Download time on a 56K phone line took approximately 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. In this setting, the back arrow function did not work. This might discourage use by students on slow connections.
There are no student self-tests, etc. Instructors will need to prepare their own assignments related to the animation.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
Easy to navigate, loads easily
High quality animation
Visual enlargement of components as they occur in the life cycle clarifies the relationships of each phase of the life cycle. Each of the steps can be viewed individually and repeated as desired. This makes it quite easy to include as a lecture supplement for instructors, and it allows students to pace their study.
Concerns:
No source code for instructors to modify animation.
Download time on a 56K phone line took approximately 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. In this setting, the back arrow function did not work. Worked fine in with a minimal DSL modem.
Creative Commons:
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