Program

Prework:

  • Familiarize yourself with Backwards Design if you are not already. Links to relevant articles can be found in the Private Workspace
  • Come up with an idea for a teaching activity that you'd like to work on that will engage students with soil data. Please send your idea to the conveners (link) by July 8. The conveners will use these ideas to organize groups that are interested in working on similar topics.

Thursday

8:30 Workshop introductions and Warming the Space

8:45 Brief overview of backward design

9:00 Basic concepts about soils

  • Morphological properties: Soil horizons, color
  • Physical properties: Texture, bulk density, saturated hydraulic conductivity
  • Chemical properties: Organic carbon, nutrients, and pH

9:30 Introduction to the Pedogenic and Environmental DataSet (PEDS) Shiny app

  • Site properties: Slope, land cover
  • Environmental variables: Mean annual precipitation (MAP), mean annual temperature (MAT)
  • Soil properties: Morphological, physical, and chemical properties
  • Interacting with the variables

9:45 Break

10:00 Explore PEDS

  • Activity 1. Exploring relationships between soil variables: Plot organic carbon and color 
  • Activity 2. Exploring relationships with environmental variables: Plot clay and mean annual temperature
  • Activity 3. Mapping soil variables: Map precipitation, temperature, and pH
  • Activity 4. Quantifying trends: Fitting and plotting linear, curvilinear, and non-linear functions to several relationships (clay vs. MAT, color vs. SOC)

10:30-11:25 Group Working Time: Design an activity

11:25 End of Day Roadcheck

11:30 Adjourn for the day

Homework: Prepare up to 3 slides about your draft activity that your group can present on Friday morning.  The presentations should be less than 5 minutes each.  Consider talking about:

  • Student learning goals for the concept/module
  • What evidence you would accept that your goals are met
  • Overview of the activity that will allow students to practice or demonstrate evidence that they have met the learning goals
  • What data will students be working with in the activity
  • What tools are necessary for students to successfully navigate the activity 

Friday

8:30 Plan for the Day

8:35 Sharing: Groups will give short presentations about their activities and get feedback from the other participants.

  • Participants write up sticky notes for each presentation: One kudo, one suggestion, and one question.
  • If there is time after the presentations, open up for questions/discussion.
  • Approximately 5 min but will depend on the number of groups

9:45 Break

10:00 Working Time: Integrate the feedback and suggestions from the group into your activities

11:05 Wrap up

11:15 Workshop evaluation

11:30 Adjourn