John McDaris

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Science Education Resource Center (SERC)
Carleton College

Geoscience Education Associate

507-222-7938, jmcdaris@carleton.edu
Curriculum Vitae (Acrobat (PDF) 15kB May18 09)

I started at SERC in September, 2003, and began by working on a couple of projects, including writing a module on instructional web design and enlarging our example collection of Investigative Case Based Learning activities.

Now, I stay busy generating geoscience content for a number of our websites including On the Cutting Edge, interfacing with a number of smaller projects using the CMS, and general site maintenance. The fastest growing part of my portfolio currently is the Associated Colleges of the Midwest FaCE Project. I am also the webmaster for the National Association of Geoscience Teachers website which we host here at SERC. I continue to work with faculty editors on a number of our projects to help move materials from inspiration to completion. Sometimes this entails actual content development and other times it involves being in contact with faculty to keep everything progressing. As always, I am a jack-of-all-trades, pulling together bits of content development, site design, digital catalog maintenance, office management, and supervision.

I've also been developing some expertise in the area of Geohazards. Beginning in 2004 and 2005 with the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the record-breaking 2005 Hurricane Season, I've been keeping abreast of the various geohazards that people are trying to teach with and about. In collaboration with TERC, I have also been able to develop part of an Earth science lab course curriculum for high school students as a part of the EarthLabs project. As a way of tying together many of the threads of work in this area, I was able to spend some time putting together the Cutting Edge module on Teaching About Hazards in Geoscience.

Outside of work, I devote a lot of time to renovating the early 1960s era home I share with my partner, Jacob, and our two dogs (Brutus - July 2010 (a 267 by 200 pixel JPEG) and Lily - Feb 2010 (a 325 by 231 pixel JPEG)), gardening, running and softball. In addition, I'm a singer involved in a number of choral ensembles in the Twin Cities.

Education

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN - Geophysics, M.S., 2000
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC - Physics, B.S. cum laude, 1997

Publications

SERC Publications

Materials Contributed through SERC-hosted Projects

Activities (8)

What Kind of Continental Margin am I? Active or Passive? part of MARGINS Data in the Classroom:MARGINS Mini-Lessons
Volcanoes, earthquakes, and topography reveal whether a continental margin is active or passive. In this activity, students use the GeoMapApp tool to work with earthquake, volcano, and topographic data to identify active and passive margins.

Hurricanes part of EarthLabs:Hurricanes
In this EarthLabs module, students will do hands-on experiments and study hurricanes in satellite imagery and visualizations. They'll also explore over 150 years of storm data to find out when and where these storms occur. If students are studying hurricanes during hurricane season, they can monitor the position and status of storms in real time. Hurricanes can serve as an exciting entry point into understanding everyday weather, or a culminating topic for an Earth system or environmental science unit.

Hurricanes part of EarthLabs for Educators:Hurricanes
In this EarthLabs module, students will do hands-on experiments and study hurricanes in satellite imagery and visualizations. They'll also explore over 150 years of storm data to find out when and where these storms occur. If students are studying hurricanes during hurricane season, they can monitor the position and status of storms in real time. Hurricanes can serve as an exciting entry point into understanding everyday weather, or a culminating topic for an Earth system or environmental science unit.

Lab 1: Meteorological Monsters part of EarthLabs for Educators:Hurricanes
The lab activity described here was created by Martos Hoffman of TERC and John McDaris of SERC for the EarthLabs project. Activity Summary and Learning Objectives In this introductory activity, students view and ...

Lab 2: Hurricane Anatomy part of EarthLabs for Educators:Hurricanes
The lab activity described here was created by John McDaris of SERC for the EarthLabs project. Activity Summary and Learning Objectives Oblique satellite view of Hurricane Katrina. Details Students view and ...

Lab 5: All About Air Pressure part of EarthLabs for Educators:Hurricanes
The lab activity described here was created by John McDaris of SERC for the EarthLabs project. Activity Summary and Learning Objectives This activity gives students hands-on experience with differences in air ...

Lab 7: Hurricanes and Heat Transfer part of EarthLabs for Educators:Hurricanes
The lab activity described here was created by John McDaris of SERC for the EarthLabs project. Activity Summary and Learning Objectives This image from the NASA Conceptual Image Lab is a part of a video that shows ...

Cycles of the Sun and Moon part of Quantitative Skills:Activity Collection
This activity asks students to download sunrise and sunset data along with moon phase data and graph these data sets together in a spreadsheet in order to visualize the cycles of the seasons and the moon.

Other Contributions (2)

Web-Based Resources part of Cutting Edge:Web-Based Resources
The following pages contain information, activities, references and links to help faculty creating on-line teaching materials in the Geosciences. This site addresses how to begin the process of putting resources on the web, how to design the educational content of those resources and how to design and build the actual resource. You are encouraged to add to the discussion of the web resources provided here. There are places throughout the site where users can leave feedback and answer questions. User comments will be incorporated into later versions of this web site and future On The Cutting Edge workshops.

Teaching about Hazards in Geoscience part of Cutting Edge:Hazards
Teaching about Hazards in Geoscience Major hazardous events and natural disasters provide geoscience educators with powerful opportunities to engage their students with class content and the general public with ...