HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology Touching Triton Workshop Description

GSTA and HudsonAlpha are partnering to provide a special professional learning opportunity Saturday, February 7th, as part of our annual conference.  Participants must be registered for the GSTA Annual Conference, but there is no additional fee for this workshop.  This will include lunch and take-aways. Touching Triton is an online activity focused on teaching the genetic, environmental and family history influences on common complex disease. The session will last 7 hours and will train teachers to use and implement the activity into the high school life science classroom.  Registration will be limited.

Touching Triton is an online educational activity focused on building understanding of common complex disease risk. Risk for common complex diseases such as colon cancer, age related macular degeneration and heart disease is influenced by many factors from many sources. Touching Triton uses the engaging storyline of long-term space flight to highlight how risk is influenced by factors from three sources: family history, environment and an individual’s genomic profile. By engaging students in an interesting storyline and graphical interface we aim to create an activity that is both enjoyable and educational.

HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology is a 501c3 not-for-profit research institute focusing on genetics and genomics research, economic development and educational outreach. HudsonAlpha Educational Outreach has a proven track record of creating engaging and immediately useful educational materials focused on genetics and genomics content. HudsonAlpha released a simple and elegant mobile device app called iCell^® in 2010. In 2011, after the 3.2 version release, iCell^® was featured on iTunes and remained in the top 10 free educational apps for over a week reaching number 3 for multiple consecutive days. To date this digital education app has been downloaded over 600,000 times since October 2011. Successful integration of HudsonAlpha classroom activities, professional development and digital education has reached over 400,000 individuals over the past year.