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[ISTATALK-L] FW: [Geo-Ed] 17 February 2007 Earth Science Sites of the Week



From: geo-ed-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:geo-ed-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mark Francek
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2007 1:32 PM
To: Geoscience Education list
Subject: [Geo-Ed] 17 February 2007 Earth Science Sites of the Week

Hello everyone,
 
This week’s 17 February 2007 “Earth Science Sites of the Week” feature the following resources:
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PICKS OF THE WEEK: Cloud gallery (in ” Atmosphere” section), Student guide to climate change (in ” Atmosphere” section), View the speeding up natural earth processes (in “General and Environmental Section” section), Stellar evolution (in “Animations” section), 100 most often misspelled (or is it “misspelled?”) words in English (in “Humor” section).
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GEOSPHERE
1) State aerial photographs
2) New GIS lessons
HYDROSPHERE
1) Coastal pollution and surfing
ATMOSPHERE
1) Cloud gallery
2) Guide to global climate change
SOLAR SYSTEM AND UNIVERSE
1) Celestial sphere diagrams
2) Space based research on the Maya
GENERAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
1) Speeding up natural processes
2) Teaching to the affective domain in the geosciences
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DEPARTMENTS
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1) Animations: interactive stellar evolution
2) Outstanding Earth Science Image: Mt. St. Helens, 25 years after the eruption
3) Good Read: suggested reading list for the age of the Earth    
4) Good Quote: what it takes to be a champion from Muhammad Ali
5) Doable Demo: newspaper mummies to determine surface area
6) Computer Tip: tabbed browsing in Firefox and Explorer
7) Teacher Tip: relating lecture to real life through forensic soils
8) Humor: 100 most misspelled words
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FEATURES
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GEOSPHERE
1) STATE AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS, EROS, (suggested by Cher Cunningham, Science Information and Education Office, USGS), browse aerial photographs of each state, with the capability to download a high resolution image or to even zoom in to particular areas of the state in high resolution mode.
 
http://eros.usgs.gov/imagegallery/collection.php?col=States+-+Landsat+7

2) NEW GIS-BASED LESSONS ONLINE, ESRI, (suggested by Joseph Kerski, ESRI), five new GIS-based lessons and data sets are online. These are the lessons from the winners of our 2006 ArcLessons Challenge, and each of them invites students to investigate their world in new and exciting ways. The lessons include “Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Teen Driving Accidents in the Bangor area, Maine,”, Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Climate Change:  Can Global Warming Cause Global Cooling?, Mapping Your Data:  Integrating Spatial and Tabular Data Into A GIS, and Finding GIS Data on the Web:  Land Cover and Land Use in Kansas.
http://www.esri.com/arclessons

HYDROSPHERE
|1) SHIFTING BASELINES, Surfing Digestopia and Shifting Baselines, (submitted by Virginia Malone, consultant, Hondo, TX), view a four minute video clip which engages the viewer in environmental changes and our acceptance of unacceptable coastal pollution. From a variety of perspectives the clip illustrates a variety of non point pollution sources.  
http://www.surfing.digestopia.com/videos/shiftingbaselines.htm

ATMOSPHERE
1) CLOUD GALLERY, Cloud Appreciation Society, (suggested by Neil Mower, CMU), search an extensive gallery of beautifully photographed cloud images.
 
http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery/index.php?x=browse&category=39&pagenum=1
 
2) GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE STUDENT GUIDE, ARIC, (suggested by Warren Huff, University of Cincinnati), find here a well written, easily navigated, and succinct guide to climate change especially designed for students.  "This guide represents an up-to-date review of climate change. Throughout, the focus has essentially been on global climate change, although reference to regional scale climatic change has been made if and when necessary. On their own each chapter is a broadly self-contained discussion of a specific sub-issue of importance."

http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/Resources/gcc/contents.html.
 
SOLAR SYSTEM AND UNIVERSE
1) CELESTIAL SPHERE, Washington State University, (suggested by C. Wiekierak, Queensbury Schools) sort through some great diagrams for moon phases, ecliptic, and eclipses.
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-->
<!--[endif]--> http://astro.wsu.edu/worthey/astro/html/lec-celestial-sph.html

2) SPACE-BASED RESEARCH ON THE MAYA, NOVA, (suggested by Theresa Schwerin, IGES), a recent broadcast of NOVA scienceNOW features the work of NASA space archaeologist Tom Sever and his colleague Bill Saturno of the University of New Hampshire who used Earth-orbiting satellites to find ancient Mayan ruins in Guatemala. This page includes a teachers guide and links to other useful resources related to this episode of NOVA scienceNOW. Viewers can also watch the complete episode online at the following link.
 
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3401/03.html
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-->
<!--[endif]--> GENERAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
1) PLAYING WITH TIME - SPEEDING UP NATURAL PROCESSES, Red Hill Studios, (suggested by Cheryl Dodes, Weber Middle School, Port Washington, NY),  visit the Gallery of Time to see the tide coming in and out in Massachusetts, the passage of seasons, and clouds changing, all over a few minutes.
 
http://www.playingwithtime.org/index.html

2. THE AFFECTIVE DOMAIN IN TEACHING GEOSCIENCES, On the Cutting Edge, SERC, (suggested by John McDaris, SERC), this part of the On the Cutting Edge website deals with the affective domain (as opposed to the cognitive domain) and how it can enhance, inhibit or even prevent student learning.  The affective domain includes factors such as student motivation, attitudes, perceptions and values.  The website contains information about the affective domain, a literature review, a framework for applying the affective domain in science education, and guidance for recognizing and using the affective domain in teaching controversial subjects.  Website users are encouraged to share their own knowledge and experience in using the using the affective domain in their teaching.
 
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/index.html
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DEPARTMENTS
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1) ANIMATIONS:  Stellar Evolution, Cornell University, pick the star color and then watch the star evolve with the aid of a Java applet.  Note age, color, and size changes as the animation progresses.

http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/astro101/java/evolve/evolve.htm#example

2) OUTSTANDING EARTH SCIENCE IMAGES: EARTH SCIENCE PICTURE OF THE DAY (EPOD) http://epod.usra.edu (suggested by Martin Ruzek, USRA, Whitelaw, WI), Mount St. Helens still offers a fascinating landscape 25 years after the eruption as vegetation reclaims erosion scars.
 
http://epod.usra.edu/archive/epodviewer.php3?oid=286432

3) GOOD READ: (suggested by Steve Mattox, Grand Valley State University)
The following books relate to the recent discussion of the age of the Earth and how we know what we know. 
 
1. The Chronologers' Quest The Search for the Age of the Earth
By Patrick Wyse Jackson Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-81332-8 $19.80 on Amazon.com Jackson provides a very readable overview of the history of scientists' attempts to date the Earth.  Almost a page turner with lots of new insights I hadn't seen before (perhaps because Jackson is a Brit).  Excellent bibliography.
 
2. The Dating Game One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth
By Cherry Lewis Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-79051-4  $24.95
A biography of Arthur Holmes, the scientist that advanced the radiometric calibration of the time scale from infancy (ca. 1911) to close to what we use today (ca. 1960).  Contains a lengthy overview of the historical development of ideas and methods used to date geologic materials. 
 
3. Geologic Time By Don L. Eicher (2nd ed.)  1976 $1.25 (on Amazon.com)  150 p.
Prentice Hall Foundations of Earth Science Series ISBN 0-13-352484-1
This book is a bit dated and may be out of print but it adds significant detail beyond the common intro college geology textbooks.  In the chapter dedicated to radiometric dating it includes the isochrons used to date the age of the Earth.  Worth finding, reading, and using.
 
4. The Age of the Earth G. Brent Dalrymple 1991 $24   473 p.
Stanford University Press ISBN 0-8047-2331-1  $24  474 p. After a chapter on history, Dalrymple dedicates chapters on radiometric methods, Earth's oldest rocks, moon rocks, meteorites, lead isotopes and "What We Know and Do Not Know."  It takes some dedication to get through this book but it is an excellent summary of the key research.
 
5. A Geologic Time Scale 2004 Gradstein, Felix and others, 2004, Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-78673-8  $55 (on Amazon.com)  589 p. This is the current synthesis and state of knowledge of what we know about the time scale and sets the international standard.  I have not read every page but I am amazed at the depth and richness of knowledge and the cleverness of scientists.
 
4) GOOD QUOTE: (suggested by ACSD Smartbrief) Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them -- a desire, a dream, a vision."
--Muhammad Ali, boxing legend
 
5) DOABLE DEMO: Newspaper Mummies to Determine Surface Area, in this fun, instructive activity, a volunteer is carefully taped with newspaper and then the area of the newspaper determined to compute how much atmospheric pressure presses down on the volunteer. This is an excellent activity for discussing experimental error and atmospheric pressure.  Why is it we don’t feel the weight of the atmosphere?
 
http://jclahr.com/science/earth_science/cientec/2005trip/target10.html
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-->
<!--[endif]--> 6) COMPUTER TIP: Kim Komando, one of the best features in Firefox is tabbed browsing. It allows you to have several Web pages open in the same window. Firefox has shortcuts to help you manage tabs and navigate between them (the newest version of Explorer also has tabbed browsing but the shortcuts below may not apply).
Ctrl + T  Opens a new tab
Ctrl + W  Closes the current tab
Ctrl + Tab  Moves to the next tab
Ctrl + Shift + Tab  Moves to the previous tab
 
http://www.komando.com/columns/index.aspx?id=2312
 
7) TEACHER TIP: (suggested by Virginia Malone, educational consultant, Hondo, TX) relate what you are teaching to the real world. For example if you are studying landforms find the story of the geologist who recognized Osama bin Ladin video site by the landforms.  http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/feb02/feature_military.html
 
If you are studying soils check out the following which includes some forensic case studies.
 
http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/jan05/feature_evidence.html

8) HUMOR: 100 Most Often Misspelled Words in English, Yourdictionary.com, here are the 100 words most often misspelled ('misspell' is one of them). Each word has a mnemonic pill with it and, if you swallow it, it will help you to remember how to spell the word.

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html
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“Earth Science Sites of the Week” dating back to 1999 are now available and can be searched by keyword. To access past archives go to the “Earth Science Site of the Week Archives” link half way down the page at http://webs.cmich.edu/resgi/ Another way to access sites is to consult RESOURCES FOR EARTH SCIENCE AND GEOGRAPHY INSTRUCTION at http://webs.cmich.edu/resgi . Over 1000 reviewed links are organized around the sequence of topics typically taught in an introductory earth science or physical geography class. Links are also available for environmental science, earth science/geography education, career opportunities, and more. The sites selected are based on image quality, ease with which lesson plans can be developed, organization, authenticity, scope, and format. Please contact me at Mark.Francek@xxxxxxxxx to remove yourself from the mailing list, add a new subscriber, or suggest a site to be listed.
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Mark Francek
Professor of Geography
Dow 285
Central Michigan University
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859

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