HR: 15:10h
AN: ED53B-07    [Abstracts]
TI: Helping Educators Find Visualizations and Teaching Materials Just-in-Time
AU: * McDaris, J
EM: jmcdaris@carleton.edu
AF: Science Education Resource Center, Carleton College, Northfield, MN 55057
AU: Manduca, C A
EM: cmanduca@carleton.edu
AF: Science Education Resource Center, Carleton College, Northfield, MN 55057
AU: Macdonald, R H
EM: rhmacd@wm.edu
AF: Department of Geology, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187
AB: Major events and natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis provide geoscience educators with powerful teachable moments to engage their students with class content. In order to take advantage of these opportunities, educators need quality topical resources related to current earth science events. The web has become an excellent vehicle for disseminating this type of resource. In response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and to Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on the US Gulf Coast, the On the Cutting Edge professional development program developed collections of visualizations for use in teaching. (serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization/collections/ tsunami.html,serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization/ collections/hurricanes.html). These sites are collections of links to visualizations and other materials that can support the efforts of faculty, teachers, and those engaged in public outreach. They bring together resources created by researchers, government agencies and respected media sources and organize them for easy use by educators. Links are selected to provide a variety of different types of visualizations (e.g photographic images, animations, satellite imagery) and to assist educators in teaching about the geologic event reported in the news, associated Earth science concepts, and related topics of high interest. The cited links are selected from quality sources and are reviewed by SERC staff before being included on the page. Geoscience educators are encouraged to recommend links and supporting materials and to comment on the available resources. In this way the collection becomes more complete and its quality is enhanced.. These sites have received substantial use (Tsunami - 77,000 visitors in the first 3 months, Hurricanes - 2500 visitors in the first week) indicating that in addition to use by educators, they are being used by the general public seeking information about the events. Thus they provide an effective mechanism for guiding the public to quality resources created by geoscience researchers and facilities, in addition to supporting incorporation of geoscience research in education.
UR: http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization
DE: 0805 Elementary and secondary education
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0815 Informal education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005