In light of the measles outbreak in California and the Southwest, are you wondering what role, if any, schools can play in teaching students about vaccines? Here are a few resources including lesson plans and games about the science of vaccines, infectious diseases, and modeling an outbreak.
BioInteractive is an excellent resource for Biology and Life Science teachers. Their materials are free, timely, and, as their names suggests, interactive (or at least engaging). BioInteractive's Immunology Virtual Lab is informative, and decent as far as virtual labs go.
For a fun, hands-on activity, my former colleagues developed this social lab activity as an exercise in learning about the transmission of communicable diseases: Each student in the class grabs a stopperered test tube containing a clear liquid - all contain water, except one, which contains diluted NaOH - and a dropper. While making small-talk with each other, students swap a few drops of their vials' solution with four others, recording the order in which they interacted with their peers. At the end of the activity, using a base-indicator, the students test their vial for the disease. The students use their data sheets and work together as a full class to determine the origination of the disease, and to see its transmission through the classroom population.
Mathematically modeling an outbreak sounds like an engaging problem for looking at exponential curves. This fall, one of The New York Times' blogs posted a sample activity in response to the ebola crisis.
For those of you stressed out about outbreaks and vaccines, perhaps playing a game with your students is more your style. Pandemic might not be well-suited for a classroom, especially given the 8-pages of rules and instructions, but it would be fun over the lunch break. Vax! is an online game about epidemic infection, is easy to use and quick - perfect for a classroom. The interface is not the most intuitive, so start at the Tour (it takes about a minute). The game takes less than a minute and you get a colorful graph to show you if you've passed or failed. On my first try I was only able save 29% of the population (sorry, world!), but on round two, I passed.
