Abstract

NASA's newly-designed data visualization cubes provide a flexible instructional strategy that encourages students to dive deeper into a variety of Earth science visualizations. Inspired by NASA's atmospheric scientist, Dr. Margaret Pippin, and the Next Generation Science Standards, these resources help students to better understand their data and communicate their findings. Leveraging the tool available from My NASA Data, Live Access Server, these cubes help students explore Earth System phenomena.

Context

The educator provides a cube with associated sheet of questions to students to complete alone or in small groups, along with Earth System satellite imagery, data, and/or line graphs to analyze. Each student takes turns rolling the cube, working together to complete the question on the cube's face and recording their work.

There are three cube types: graph data, map data, and general data (from a spreadsheet or data table) and three levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced to help differentiate student learning capabilities. The cubes have a different activity on each side and are written generically to support a variety of phenomena. These resources were developed using NGSS framework for upper elementary and secondary classrooms.

Why It Works

An educator may use different cubes within the classroom based on instructional or differentiation needs such as readiness, visualization type, student interest, phenomenon, etc. These cubes can be used with map visualizations, line graphs, and data (whether processed satellite data or data collected from your school yard).