The ciliate Paramecium is not only one of the most important organisms in cell biology, but is also an excellent teaching material for enhancing students’ understanding of cellular structures and cell physiology. So, it is desirable that l ving paramecia be presented to students. Although paramecia are easily cultivated in various culture media, the preparation and sterilization of the media are troublesome procedures. For these reasons, a more convenient method of culturing paramecia may be desired by schoolteachers. It has been reported that 0.1% Calorie Mate (liquid) can be used as the culture medium of paramecia (lgari 1992). We performed more detailed examinations to determine whether various soft drinks including Calorie Mate could be used as culture media. As a result, we confirmed that 0.1% Calorie Mate is the most suitable for the cultivation of P. trichium, and further, clarified that their initial cell density on the cultivation showed little affect on the cell density of the stationary phase. Results also suggested that vitamins contained in Calorie Mate might be important for paramecia cultivation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how students understand and recognize the meaning of the “respect for life” by conducting a questionnaire on 145 college students. The results are as follows;

1. How do students distinguish “life” by various views on “respect for life”? They distinguished (1) a vertebrate and an annelid as a view of “a pain” which they suffer, (2) a mammal as a view of “a companion” and “similarity” to us and (3) a vertebrate (excluding fish) as a view of “death”, from another “life”.

2. What attitude or acts do students consider as “respect for life”? They considered attitudes such as protection of animals, conservation of ecosystems and aesthetics of life (except for utility of life) as it.

3. What are reasons why students should consider “respect for life”? They consider (1) their duty to protect all “life” and (2) the dignity of life, as their reasons.

4. What biology classes or fieldworks at schools do students remember as relative to “respect for life”? Their good memories for “respect for life” are breeding and dissection. The one against it is dissection too.

5. What activities in a series of observations and experiments from elementary to high schools are not regarded as “respect for life”? For example, they are (1) shutting up animals in a small room for breeding and (2) killing animals for dissection.

The present authors developed an Internet on-line teaching resource named “Plant Reproduction” in 1997. Two other new teaching resources have now been developed; “Plant Mitosis” and “Experiment and Observation about Plants” for the secondary schools. These Internet materials have been accessed by 270-1,200 users every month, some of them are from overseas. Some have responded through e-mail to the questionnaires.

The purpose of this study was to survey the utilization of the Internet teaching resources by users, to evaluate our developed materials, and to analyze the merits and demerits of them.

From the responses to the questionnaire, the web site pictures and explanations were evaluated as good quality for student use. Based on these responses the organization and operating system are considered suitable for teaching materials in schools. Many users have responded that they wanted to utilize them for the supporting and summarizing experiments in science class. Therefore, it is clear that the developed materials are useful for the implementation of experiments and the application of computers for secondary schools. However, many users tend to use those materials off-line. They only show pictures to the students as a substitute for the actual hands-on activity.