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Wired Science TeachersWired Science Teachers

Michael Lampert
Michael Lampert

teaches MicroElectronics, Astronomy and Physics at West Salem High School in Salem, Oregon.

Jerone Mitchell
Jerone Mitchell

teaches AP Computer Science, AP Statistics, and Pre-AP Computer Science at W. T. White High School in Dallas, TX.

Brian McCombs
Brian McCombs

is the Mathematics Chairman at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Kent, Ohio.

Sharon Radford
Sharon Radford

teaches Introductory and Advanced Placement Biology at Paideia School in Atlanta, Georgia.

William Church
William Church

teaches Physics, Physical Science, and Robotics in Littleton, NH.

PBS Teachers
Sharon Radford

Sharon Radford


Sharon Radford teaches Introductory and Advanced Placement Biology at Paideia School in Atlanta, Georgia.  A member of NABT, Sharon has served as the Georgia State Representative and member of the nominating committee.  At present she is serving as Director-at-large, and while in that position organized the Advanced Placement section of NABT.

During her career, Radford has taken advantage of opportunities to broaden her knowledge of biology.  In 1994 and 1995 she attended the Human Genome Project workshop and still uses insights from that experience in her classes.  In addition, she attended the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Institute on Bioethics in 1992, and then helped lead a weeklong workshop on Bioethics in 1993.  More recently she has taught summer courses in Biotechnology and Human Genetics to gifted high school students in Pennsylvania and New York. The knowledge gained from the Woodrow Wilson Institute added an important dimension to those classes.

Outside the classroom, Radford has organized five student/adult trips to Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands, has taken students to a marine station on the coast of Georgia dozens of times, and runs a science speaker program for her students.  She also served a four-year term on the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1995-1998), and has served as a Faculty Consultant for the Advanced Placement Biology Examination since 1995.

Radford was honored as the Outstanding Biology Teacher by NABT for the state of Georgia in 1991, and in 2006 she received the Siemens Award for Advanced Placement Biology.

More Recent PostsMore Recent Posts

In Your Classroom: "The Business of Disease (Restless Legs Syndrome)"

by Sharon Radford     Department: In Your Classroom
06.27.08
Maybe you were like me when the RLS ads first started showing on television, not believing that RLS was real, thinking that it was a fabricated condition to sell more pharmaceuticals. Or conversely, maybe you suffer from RLS and became impatient with non-believers like me. I am now convinced that RLS is a real condition that we can use in the classroom when we study brain and nervous system function.
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In Your Classroom: "Body Builders"

by Sharon Radford     Department: In Your Classroom
03.30.08
Wow. This segment of WIRED SCIENCE brings home the great strides we have made in tissue culture and organ repair. This information fits into our biology classes in several places—when we talk about immunology, when we talk about cancer, and when we talk about body systems.
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In Your Classroom: "Got Clones?"

by Sharon Radford     Department: In Your Classroom
01.31.08
The segment on "cloning" provides a timely opportunity to introduce students to bioethical decision-making. We are inundated almost daily by new advances in science which necessitate such decisions. From agricultural applications, such as genetically modified foods and pesticide resistant crops, to more personal relevancies, such as genetic testing, new reproductive technologies and stem cell research, we need to be able to sort our way through these choices. Some of these issues are societal, some are personal. All are difficult.
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In Your Classroom: "Deep Brain Stimulation"

by Sharon Radford     Department: In Your Classroom
01.18.08
Watching the clip, "Deep Brain Stimulation," with a class provides opportunities to explore brain function from several different perspectives. First, students might want to know what causes these movement disorders. Are they all inherited, like the essential tremor suffered by Morris Porter?
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In Your Classroom: "Mixed Feelings"

by Sharon Radford     Department: In Your Classroom
12.19.07
The plasticity of the brain never ceases to amaze me, and this program underscores the ability of the brain to fill in missing functions. In a biology class we have numerous opportunities to emphasize this capability when we cover the brain and nervous system.
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In Your Classroom: Blood Simple

by Sharon Radford     Department: In Your Classroom
10.31.07
Blood. We take it for granted until we need it. In biology classes we talk about the oxygen carrying properties of hemoglobin in physiology, about inheritance of blood types in genetics, about surface antigens in immunology. Hemoglobin seems to be everywhere in our classes.
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In Your Classroom: Face Reader

by Sharon Radford     Department: In Your Classroom
09.26.07
When I first encountered the Face Reader, I was taken with the use of the ESP (Emotional Social Prosthesis) to help children with Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism which may have a genetic component. Such intervention and help parallels that for children who suffer from metabolic disorders, such as phenylketonuria (PKU) which is clearly genetic. In those cases, alteration of diet prevents the mental retardation which results if the condition is untreated. Similarly, the use of the ESP for children with Asperger's syndrome holds the promise of easing isolation and helping in social situations.
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