Geological Mapping of a Virtual Landscape
Mark Helper, The University of Texas at Austin
This virtual mapping exercise is part video game, part map prediction and interpretation. You will navigate a virtual landscape to "collect" outcrops and their field notes, recording your observations on ...

Geologic Mapping of a Virtual Landscape II - Three River Hills
Mark Helper, The University of Texas at Austin
This second virtual mapping exercise builds on the first (Geologic Mapping of a Virtual Landscape), but contains a more complicated geological puzzle to solve. This virtual landscape is also much larger, with a ...

Surviving Extinction, A Journey Through Time
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
Explore prehistoric environments over the past 350 million years, make good decisions to avoid deadly predators, and discover real expedition sites as you chart your own path through time. 99% of all species that ...

Tidepooling Field trip (online)
Katryn Wiese, City College of San Francisco
Tidepooling Field Trip online (developed for remote learning during COVID-19 pandemic); students will watch video and review photos to simulate a field experience as they explore Pillar Point tidepools (as they ...

Using StraboSpot for Field Sedimentology & Stratigraphy
Casey J. Duncan, New Mexico State University
This module uses StraboSpot (free mobile app for iOS and Android devices and web API, backend database) and two Utah datasets to facilitate teaching field methods related to sedimentology and stratigraphy. The data ...

Fold Analysis Challenge
Declan De Paor, Old Dominion University; Mladen Dorevic, Old Dominion University; Paul Karabinos, Williams College; Barb Tewksbury, Hamilton College; Steve Whitmeyer, James Madison University
The Fold Analysis Challenge (FAC) uses Google Earth and a customized Google Earth interface to help students visualize the orientations of eroded dipping sedimentary layers and to visualize the geometries of folds ...

Virtual field trip to Giant's Causeway, Ireland
Jill Schneiderman, Vassar College
This online assignment takes the students on a virtual field trip to Giant's Causeway in northern Ireland. It begins with a brief video of the geological site, includes some questions relevant to the history ...

SIGkit (Software for Introductory Geophysics toolkit) for modelling and visualization of data
Charly Bank, University of Toronto
Predicting what geophysical data may look like and making basic inferences from data are critical learning outcomes of introductory geophysics courses whether they happen in a classroom or in a field setting. This ...

Introduction to Planetary Mapping
Alexandra Davatzes, Temple University
This is an introduction to photogeologic/geomorphologic mapping of a planetary surface. The goal of this project is to help students learn the components of a geologic map and try to use all of their undergraduate ...

Introduction to JMARS
Alexandra Davatzes, Temple University
This is an introduction to using JMARS. It is a bit of a "cookbook" for getting students comfortable with the different things you can do in JMARS, such as adding different visual datasets with ...

Marble Bar, Australia
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
The Marble Bar Chert of Western Australia, is one of the earliest sedimentary deposits on Earth. The Marble Bar Chert, along with the presence of pillow basalts, could be an important part of Earth's early ...

Banded Iron Formations, Australia
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
The banded iron formations (BIFs) of Karijini Gorge in Western Australia are distinctive units of sedimentary rock that are almost always of Precambrian age. This unique formation is the largest iron deposit on ...

Exploring the Grand Canyon: Mystery of Blacktail Canyon
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
Nearly two billion years of the Earth's geological history has been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layers of rock while the Colorado Plateau was uplifted. ...

Knossos Ancient Lake Environment, Australia
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
The 2.73 Ga Knossos Locality is a succession of clastic and carbonate rocks outcropping along the southern margin of the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia. It hosts abundant, diverse and exceptionally ...

First Reef-building Animals, Australia
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
Archaeocyathids were important marine organism that lived in shallow tropical and subtropical waters of the early Cambrian Period around 530 million years ago. They became the planet's very first reef-builders ...

Robinson Park Orienteering in Minecraft
Erika Rader, University of Idaho
Students will learn how to relate topographic map features to hills, valleys, and plateaus by using the pace and compass method of navigation in the 3D virtual world of Minecraft.

Video Games as Physical Geology Labs
Ronald Dorn, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
This resource includes a series of laboratory activities associated with geovisualizations that look and play like a video game. The student controls the video game camera and the avatar to interact with DEM ...

First Burrowing Animals, Australia
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
Deep in the hills of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia scientists continue to study one of the most enigmatic stories in the history of life on Earth. This site preserves evidence of a dramatic change in the ...

Living Microorganisms, Shark Bay, Australia
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
3,000 years ago microbes started building up stromatolites in Shark Bay, Western Australia. These structures are the earliest signs of life on Earth, and are considered the longest continuing biological lineage. ...

Oldest Multicellular Animals: Nilpena, South Australia (unguided VFT)
Wendy Taylor, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
Deep in the hills of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, fossils of the earliest multicellular animals, called the Ediacara fauna, appear in the rock record and evolve in three distinct stages. Then suddenly, ...