Educational Media Reviews Online

The two educational programs of the series The Domains of Life focus on the latest biological classification of life brought about by the development of molecular techniques. DNA/RNA sequencing technologies have made it possible to discover similarities and differences between the many organisms living on Earth. Comparing ribosomal RNA sequences revealed fundamental differences between organisms previously considered more closely related. This combined with other evidences lead to the definition of Domain as the most fundamental level in classification of life on Earth.

The first video program follows the evolutionary events leading to the development of the three main domains of life: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eucarya. Animation is used to explain evolutionary events in the prebiotic soup leading to the development of the first cells. The representatives of Archaea are found today in environments with similar conditions to the ones present on Earth millions of years ago when life began to develop. The Domain of Bacteria is presented in detail with a great deal of excellent microscopic sequences demonstrating their behaviour and structure.

The second video program follows the evolution of the Domain Eucarya. Microscopic pictures and animation are used effectively to show how endosymbiosis lead to the development of specialized intracellular organelles, such as mitochondria and plastids. The video proceeds further to introduce other processes, such as locomotion and sexual reproduction, important for adaptation and evolution of eukaryotes .

Both video programs use magnificent colour close-ups to show microscopic life, and animation to illustrate processes that could not be filmed. For example, locomotion, which was always hard to explain in a standard text media, is particularly well served by the use of animation. The narrative, accompanying both microscopic films and animation, is clear with a pace easy to follow.

The accompanying CD-ROM Learning Guide has: Storyboards for both videos; Glossary; Quizzes; Activities and Teacher Notes.

• Storyboards: each screen is divided into three sections: Visual; Narration; and Notes and Links.
  • Visual section uses images from the video. Some of the images are clickable to display a movie or more detailed picture.
  • Narration displays the narrated text used in the video.
  • Notes and Links contains more detailed explanation of the narrated text and has hypertext links to appropriate web sites. Some of these sites are really worth a closer look. The Talk Origins (http://talkorigins.org), for example, is an excellent site and a must for anyone interested in evolution. Having links to web pages on a CD-ROM has its drawbacks of which inability to update is the most frustrating. There is a provision to use 'update links' button on the CD-ROM when web-jump links are not active. However, clicking 'update links' returns Error 404. A link to BioMedia Associates leads (at the time of this review) to an "under construction" site obviously in its early stages as there are no active links except an email. However, there is a page at the BioMedia site that provides appropriate annotated web links for this series.

• Glossary: consists of some 150 words used in the text of either video or CD-ROM. Unfortunately, it is an alphabetical list only with no search capability.
• Quizzes: There are two quizzes first of which is a list of essay questions with no feedback and in the second one, students have to match given definitions with the correct term. A multimedia system could have been used much more effectively to add some interactivity to the quizzes.
• Activities: The teacher may find some useful ideas for preparing activities for a class but it doesn’t provide enough feedback for independent use by a student. Some of the activities require retrieving data from various web pages links to which are often not active.
• Teacher Notes: Contains printable tests for both video programs with questions arranged more or less in order of information in the programs. Answer keys are provided.

The navigation through the various parts of the CD-ROM could be more consistent. For example, in 'Glossary' the 'H' button (presumably for Home) leads to the main Menu; in 'Quizzes' it's the 'Menu' button.

The Domains of Life will be an excellent support material for students taking an introductory biology course. Its powerful illustration of major biological processes combined with its briefness makes it ideal for in class presentation. Recommended for college and undergraduate library collection.