Project Proposal

The goal of this project is to reinforce the concept that,

You Are What YOU Eat

This project will consist of several lab activities using both local interface probe technology and Internet access. It is estimated to be a 3 to 4 week unit entitled, “Maintaining Energy and Body Weight.” The order of the activities is important in achieving the total overall impression that you are what you eat. However each activity is represented as a stand-alone activity that can be modified for younger students or for different classes like health class or math class.

This chart identifies the activities involved and the technology that will be used.

How the body digests and absorbs food	A.D.A.M. CD-rom series and web sources
Biochemistry of the three main biomolecules involved in nutrition: carbohydrates, proteins and fats	Cber-Ed CD-rom series and web sources
Metabolism of carbohydrates, into ATP	Software: Life’s greatest mysteries and web sources
Calculating calories in food	Pasco interface probe technology to calculate heat calories
BMR; basal metabolic rate	Internet link to calculate individuals BMR
Weight maintenance	Using calorie tables for calorie intake, BMR calculations and exercise tables for calories burned from the web

I am planning to use this unit on my biology 2 students next quarter. I hope to get some real feedback as the project evolves and I continue to revise this project. I would be very grateful for any feedback before I launch this on my students. I have tried some of the above activities but have never pulled them together in a unit like this. Some of these activities I have done manually, like measuring the calories in food, or with pencil and paper calculations, like BMR, so it will be interesting to see if the integration of technology enhances or unnecessarily complicates things. I know from experience that high school students are motivated by things that personally affect them. They are interested in nutrition, but the food pyramid doesn’t excite them. So of course there will be no links to the food pyramid from this page. This unit follows a unit on the systems of the body, which are studied while doing a rat dissection. In this way, the students have a visual picture of where that food goes.