Google Earth, Streams, and Glaciers
Related Links
Using Google Earth
Google Earth and Geoscience Education

Allison Dunn

Worcester State College

This activity has been reviewed by 2 review processes (view details)

This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.
This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process. This review took place as a part of a faculty professional development workshop where groups of faculty reviewed each others' activities and offered feedback and ideas for improvements. To learn more about the process On the Cutting Edge uses for activity review, see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.

Initial Publication Date: May 7, 2008 | Reviewed: November 3, 2013 (see revision history: 2 events)

Summary

In this assignment, students download Google Earth and use it to investigate some of the fluvial and glacial processes introduced in lecture.

Physical, GIS/Mapping/Field Techniques, Fluvial, Glacial/Periglacial | College Introductory

Expand for more detail and links to related resources

Share your modifications and improvements to this activity through the Community Contribution Tool »

Context

Audience

This is for an undergraduate Physical Geography course with no pre-requisite. The class is approximately 80% non-majors and 20% geography/natural science majors.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Students must know the difference between meandering and braided streams, and where each is likely to be found.
Students must understand the concept of a floodplain and how to identify it on a map.
Students must understand how fluvial erosion differs from glacial erosion.

How the activity is situated in the course

This is the final assignment in a semester-long course. It is the only assignment that they complete entirely on their own.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

be able to independently locate and identify different river types
be able to independently determine how different valleys were formed
be able to determine the gradient and floodplain of different rivers

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

The biggest challenge for a lot of my students is knowing where to start to find one of these rivers (I ask them to cut and paste an example of each type of river). It's one thing to identify a braided/meandering river from a slide in lecture, but it's another thing entirely for them to have to find it on their own.

The students have to think back to *where* different rivers are likely to be found (i.e., ends of glaciers for braided streams) and hunt around with Google Earth based on their knowledge.

Other skills goals for this activity

To be honest, a major goal of this assignment is to get them just to use Google Earth. The most common feedback I get from this assignment is that they really enjoyed the assignment and couldn't stop exploring with GE after it was done. I think GE is a great tool to get them to explore geographic curiosity they may not have known they possessed.

Description of the activity/assignment

In this assignment, students use Google Earth to investigate a variety of fluvial and glacial features. Firstly, they simply have to find an example of both a meandering and braided river and cut-and-paste the image into their assignment. They also need to trace the path of the river to see where it ends. Next, they are given three latitude/longitude coordinates and are asked to determine the river type, channel width, floodplain width, gradient, etc. In the last part, they are given the latitude/longitude coordinates of two valleys. They use the terrain & tilt features of Google Earth to determine whether the valley is V- or U-shaped. They then decide what sort of processes is responsible for the valley's shape.

Determining whether students have met the goals

I have students email me their assignments upon completion (fewer trees lost that way). It's relatively simple to see if they understood the assignment or not.

One problem I have is that students often use Wikipedia to look up "braided river" and "meandering river" so I get several students each semester who use GE to find the river examples from Wikipedia. I still give them full credit because they have used GE to find the particular river.

More information about assessment tools and techniques.