Welcome to BiologyInMotion! Here you will find animations, interactive activities, and cartoons designed to make learning biology a richer, more engaging experience. After years of teaching biology in various colleges and universities, I began developing my own graphics and multimedia, mainly for in-class presentation. The many positive responses I received led me to initiate this website, where you will find an ever-growing collection of resources. New additions will include interactive tutorials, quizzes, and other activities, in addition to updated versions of the many biology cartoons currently gathering dust in my portfolio.

Despite the vast resources of the Web, it's surprisingly hard to find interactive activities, or even decent images, for illustrating most topics that come up in biology lectures. In planning new projects, my primary goal is to remedy the absence of such resources in areas that are widely taught. If you have a suggestion for a project that you think would be widely used, please let me know.

There are many ways to use Web activities, animations, and cartoons in teaching and learning biology. If you are an instructor you will find some practical suggestions in my teaching tips. Ideally the images will be presented as part of a lecture presentation (if you have an internet-connected classroom), and can be re-visited later by students as an exercise or refresher. Or in many cases, an instructor may simply recommend students visit the site on their own time. Hopefully some visitors will even come just for the entertainment, and perhaps learn something while they are here.

I have found that in-class animations and cartoons improve attention and increase students' enthusiasm for the subject, particularly in large introductory lecture courses. But the usefulness of good biology visuals goes beyond entertainment. Cartoons can explain difficult concepts by providing visual metaphors that are easily grasped. The imagery and experiences of everyday life, a common language shared by all, can be used to explain abstract ideas. Interactive activities can offer many of the same benefits as a real laboratory exercise. The additional advantage of using the Web for all these things is that instructors can easily share materials and hence the value of one's efforts is increased.

To indicate the type of interactivity in each activity, the following icons accompany the listings:

	Rollovers or Click-ons	The user can roll the mouse over parts of the image, or click on parts of the image, to find out more information or influence the animation. Within the activity, the user will be made aware of these effects by the presence of this icon, or by specific instructions.
	Drag-and-drop	The user can drag objects around in the activity. Within the activity, this is indicated by specific instructions.
	Animation	Images that change without the user having to roll over or drag anything.
	Simulation	Simulation of some biological process. The results are randomized (i.e., they're different every time you run the simulation). This may be represented through animation or by some other means, such as a graph.