Teaching Evolution and the Nature of Science. This online book, published by the National Academy of Sciences, is an excellent resource for teachers. It explains the important concepts in evolution and provides classroom activities.
Understanding Evolution. University of California, Berkeley. This excellent website is divided into sections: What is evolution and how it works? How does evolution impact my daily life? What is the evidence for evolution? What is the history of evolutionary theory? and What is the theory of evolution? A teacher section offers advice and material for teaching evolution, the nature of science, relevance of evolution, history of evolutionary thought, evidence, misconceptions and potential pitfalls. A multi-part, on-line Evolution 101 with more detailed explanations of evolution is also offered.
Evolution Resources. National Science Teachers Association. Provides teachers with online resources for teaching evolution, links to evolution headlines and news, summaries and ordering information for three NSTA books concerning evolution.
The section, National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), provides answers and talking points to some of the common questions raised by parents and students about evolution, and proponents of teaching creationism or intelligent design in the science classroom. The site also provides links to evolution headlines and past NSTA articles concerning evolution and the teaching of evolution in the classroom.
Evolution, PBS. Discussion of Darwin, Change, Extinction, Survival, Sex, Humans, and Religion as presented in the PBS television series. The section on "Change" has a very useful timeline. On the timeline, you can choose points in geologic time and find out information about important changes in geology, life, and extinctions from the time you chose.
Evolution. Actionbioscience. Organization to promote bioscience literacy offers website with numerous short essays and images (some as excerpts from published papers), and interviews with noted scientists concerning (1) evolution and the history of life, (2) evolution in action, (3) investigating human evolution, (4) science and belief, (5) species and speciation, (6) the fossil record, and an (7) archives section.
The Humans part of the website specifically concerns hominid evolution. At Origins ofHuman Kind, different fossils and artifacts of ancient hominids are placed on a time line. Selecting a symbol provides a photograph, brief description, age, date of discovery, and location of the material. There is also a hominid family tree diagram and a species gallery of skull fragment images. See also Riddle of the Bones, and the evolution FAQ. Some parts requires Macromedia Flash plug in, and page is designed so it fills only part of the screen, which makes some images small.
University of California-Berkeley’s Learning from the Fossil Record is a popular earth history site that includes three sections applicable to evolution: Learning from the fossil record, National science standard matrix, and the Geologic time scale. Each of these sections provides information and links to evolution sites and K-12 classroom activities.
WWW Virtual Library-Evolution (Biosciences). Provides links to evolution materials in the categories of evolution, biology, software, molecular evolution, phylogenetics, systematics, and taxonomy, paleontology and natural history.
Tree of Life Project. The project is a collaborative effort of biologists from around the world, which provides information about biodiversity, the characteristics of different groups of organisms, and their evolutionary history. Click on a kingdom and follow the systematics (family tree) through the tree of life to more specific organisms. The tree uses technical (latin) names in a hierarchial classification (using cladistics/cladograms), but there is a general summary in an introduction along each part of the tree (scroll to text below the tree), followed by more technical information on characteristics, fossils, phylogenetic relationships, and references.
Mechanisms of Evolution. University of California, Berkeley. Short discussions with pictures and diagrams of descent, mechanisms of change, genetic variation, genetic drift, natural selection, and coevolution. Topics are arranged as a slide show.
