February 12th is Darwin Day to celebrate the birthday of the great man himself, Mr Charles Darwin. Evolution has been under attack since the day Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species in 1859.
For a comprehensive roundup of the wealth of evidence which supports evolution, you can’t beat the Talk Origins website.
Some guidance on the teaching of Evolution in the classroom can be found here on Teachernet:
Here are some websites that will be of use to teachers to help teach Evolution in the classroom:
Here’s an audio guide to the life and times of Charles Darwin and more excellent resources from The Guardian here.
Here’s an amazing interactive Tree of Life from the Wellcome Trust.
This Evolution website, tied in with a PBS television series, contains lots of resources about Darwin and Evolution : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/ Plus links to guidance for teachers (in the US, but valid elsewhere) on teaching Evolution in the face of Intelligent Design claims.
Becoming Human brings together interactive multimedia, research and scholarship to promote greater understanding of the course of human evolution: http://www.becominghuman.org/
Understanding Evolution is a non-commercial, education website, teaching the science and history of evolutionary biology. This site is here to help you understand what evolution is, how it works, how it factors into your life, how research in evolutionary biology is performed, and how ideas in this area have changed over time.
They also have a special site for K-12 Teachers: Understanding Evolution for Teachers.
Another useful website, when faced with statements such as “Evolution is Just a Theory” is this one: http://notjustatheory.com/
Also check out this blog post from Snapshot Science, which has some other useful links and ideas for teaching about Evolution.
Happy Birthday Darwin!
And for a little bit of balance, you may want to visit Answers in Genesis, where much evidence is provided that God created the earth (and Darwin’s are theories exposed).
Afraid not Alan. That’s the whole point. Sites like Answers in Genesis do not actually provide any evidence. They try and nitpick at evolution, often with wild and crazy theories that have nothing to back them up. Scratch the surface and the evidence is simply not there.
Are you really suggestion we should teach this about how the dinosaurs died out?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/what-happened-to-the-dinosaurs
Creation stories are great – there are loads of them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creation_myths) and they definitely should be taught in schools in religious studies classes, because its good to know about how all the different religions around the world believe we came into being. But they have no place in a Science class where the whole subject is underpinned by evidence-based, peer-reviewed data. AiG is not evidence based or peer-reviewed.
Here are some links to more Evolution Myths and Misconceptions:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13620-evolution-24-myths-and-misconceptions.html
and http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au