A teacher’s guide to 360 laboratory animal tours: www.labanimaltour.org

www.labanimaltour.org is a ‘street view’ 360° online tour of four research facilities that use animals:

• MRC Harwell Institute
• The Pirbright Institute
• University of Bristol
• University of Oxford

The tours contain 56 scenes containing 35 video clips of technicians and scientists. This short teachers guide maps the resources against KS3 - KS5.

So what can you see? There is surgery on a pig to test artificial blood vessels; there are cows being used to make new vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease; mice used in genetic research being transferred to clean cages and monkeys taking tests on computers.

Inside each tour there around ten short videos that include interviews with animal technologists who look after the animals and scientists who use animals in their research. We have also added information points and some labels to the 360 images.

These tours give substance to the ‘working scientifically’ component of the science curriculum and provide some examples that can support work from Key Stage 3 through A-level to undergraduate courses in the biological sciences.
We anticipate that you will ask your students to view particular parts of the tour to answer questions that you set them. We would be delighted to hear how the tours are used and received to guide our future work, and so we can share your ideas with other teachers.

If you have any comments or questions please email me, Richard, at rscrase@uar.org.uk