1. Infographics: Why Microbiology? http://visual.ly/why-i-picked-microbiology-

Description:  It is a very interesting and one of the pre requisite subject to enter into any health care field. However, students are scared of this subject as it has too much content to cover in one semester. On the other hand, by mid semester, students start liking this subject after looking onto positive outcomes of normal flora in our body. This infographic will help new comers to get a passion for this subject.

2. Blog – http://blog.ted.com/2014/03/19/how-microbes-could-cure-disease-rob-knight-at-ted2014/

How microbes could cure disease. Is there a part of our bodies that has just as much to do with who we are and how we feel that we haven’t yet paid much attention to? Yes, he says. And it’s our gut.

It’s a fascinating area of research. To underline just how much potential it has, Knight introduces us to C.diff, a disease that leaves people suffering from diarrhea 20 times a day. Some patients don’t respond to antibiotics, and his lab conducted a study on people who’d had this condition for at least two years. By transplanting fecal microbes from healthy individuals into these patients, there was an immediate change in their gut community. The disease was cured—in as little as a single day. And it didn’t come back.

“We need to develop a microbial GPS,” he says, “to understand where we are, where we want to go and what we need to do to get there.”

3. Curation 1: Microbes Medley:

The Micro-Organisms Song http://youtu.be/9c0Ui9bv9Jk

This is very good song about microbes (both good and bad). It is funny to watch this video how it sings about various bacteria in our body. Microbes are tiny living beasts- bacteria, viruses, mold and yeast. Some of them are harmful and some of them are not…..

Class strategy: I will like to show this video to students on the very first day and they will have to do internet search on 5 bacteria as normal flora and pathogens each including their names written in correct binomial nomenclature as their HW to be turned it in for their next class. The students fear the most from microbial names itself and the way their names are written e.g Staphylococcus aureus

4. Curation 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BZME8H7-KU

You Are Mainly Microbe – Meet Your Microbiome

You Are Mainly Microbe – Meet Your Microbiome

Ever not felt completely like yourself? There’s a good reason for that. Because a large part of you . . . isn’t you. Our bodies are home to ten times as many microbes as human cells. We are walking ecosystems, each of us home to thousands of different species on and inside of us. Meet your microbiome!

Sure, some bacteria are dangerous, but without our tiny friends we wouldn’t be here (literally). It is funny that microbes in our body call the human body home ! Our belly button is a lot like rain forests, the spectrum of flora might vary, but an ecologist can count on a certain few dominant tree types.

5. Threaded lesson:

Class strategies:

1. I will provide all the above video links on BB.

2. The students will be required to watch those videos.

3. A HW lesson plan will be gven to students where they will be required to write names of various microbes (not only bacteria) including fungus, bacteria, virus, algae and helminth etc. 

4. Students will have to classify microbes as per taxonomy scheme.

Outcome: I am very hopeful that my students will benefit from this HW as they really do not feel confident about taxonomy part and we discuss a lot during our semester. This will give them a head start to understand taxonomy, a difficult topic for our target population..