“The Gene” Part 2 – New Educational Materials from pgEd

The second and final installment of the film The Gene: An Intimate History by Ken Burns and Barak Goodman premieres Tuesday, April 14th at 8pm EST on PBS stations across the US.

As an educational partner for the film, pgEd has created a series of new educational pieces that accompany both parts of the film. If you missed the first installment of the film, it is available to stream and is also being periodically rebroadcast.

Educators wishing to discuss topics from “The Gene” with students, will find clips from the film paired with pgEd lesson plans on the PBS LearningMedia website for The Gene.

All 11 pgEd modules can be accessed using the link above, and for a detailed list of topics, see below. Teachers and students alike will be able to make connections between the film and many middle and high school curricular topics.

• Introduction to Genetics and Medicine

• Identifying and Understanding Rare Genetic Conditions: Meet Tess Bigelow

• History, Access to Care, and Emerging Genetic-Based Therapies

• When New Treatments Come with Big Hopes and a Big Price Tag: Spinal Muscular Atrophy

• Direct-to-Consumer Testing in the Genomic Age

• Ancestry Testing in the Genomic Age

• How Does Ancestry Testing Work?

•  Privacy Protections for Genetic Information: Meet GINA

• Genome Editing and CRISPR 

• Genetics, History, and the American Eugenics Movement

• Using Primary Sources to Examine the History of Eugenics

Funding for pgEd’s work on these educational resources was provided by Harvard Medical School and the Department of Genetics and a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Institutes of Health.

* Our SEPA project is supported by the Office Of The Director, National Institutes Of Health under Award Number R25GM129172. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.