Teaching Some Concepts of Transport Mechanism to Middle School Students in Valledupar Colombia

Abstract

Biophysics is an unknown field in Colombian schools; the factor that can influence this is lack of connection between teaching biology with physical principles, which can be an obstacle to his real learning. At skill standards defined by the Education Council of Colombia, mechanisms of cellular transport teaching is included as a subject of compulsory education in the early grades of secondary basic education since their understanding is especially important when dealing with processes such as respiration, circulation, photosynthesis and excretion in later grades.Based on this standards and in order to divulgate and start with the biophysics formation from an early age, was implemented a proposal at public school of the village of Aguas Blancas, in the city of Valledupar, in the Colombian Caribbean, with students from middle school with ages between 10-12 years old and from a very low income families. We develop as a part of a science class, teaching concepts of passive cellular transport mechanisms: diffusion and osmosis, using problem-based learning method. Activities performed include 11 sessions which was oriented attend 34 children to solve a specific problem-based situation, which was a story about a girl from 2085 who traveled to another planet, she should explain to the planet's people how her pet, a fish, couldn’t survive out of water, and shouldn’t be taken out of seawater. The concepts addressed in the study of the situation were: concentration through experience “Build your dreams” semi-permeability, osmosis, and as a part of this experience we implemented the Difussion lesson plans available at the Biophysical Society web site released in 2015 as “BASICS: Biophysics - A Step-by-Step Introduction to Concepts for Students”. At the end of the experience we found that the students was motivated to learn more about this topics and they found very interesting the biophysics field as a new way to understand the nature.