Used a Teach the Earth Teaching Activity? Share your experiences through the new Community Contribution Tool
Poster Session Part of
Monday Poster Session
Authors
Sean Fox, Carleton College
Rachel Teasdale, California State University-Chico
Ellen Iverson, Carleton College
Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope Consortium
Sandrine Matiasek, California State University-Chico
Over the last 20 years the Earth education community has collectively and openly shared over 5000 teaching activities through SERC-hosted websites, as highlighted in the NAGT-managed Teach the Earth portal. These activities are an important resource for the community and have been widely adapted for use in classrooms across the country. As part of a new NSF-funded effort we have enhanced the Serckit platform on which these activities are hosted to allow educators who have used one of these activities to share back their experiences, modifications, data updates and enhancements. This new functionality, the Community Contribution Tool (CCT), presents a simple form through which educators can describe their adaptations and upload supporting files such as revised handouts or updated datasets. Their contribution will then be visible within the original activity; attributed to them and alongside similar contributions from their peers. We hope this new functionality will catalyze a virtuous cycle where hard-won classroom experiences on effective use of the activities are shared back, made visible and inspire further evolution of the original activities to extend their lifespan. Our grant funded work focuses specifically on using the CCT to support updating existing InTeGrate (Interdisciplinary Teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future) and GETSI (GEodesy Tools for Societal Issues) modules. This effort, anchored by a workshop at this year's Earth Educators' Rendezvous, has a particular focus on updating the datasets that are critical to these collections. But the CCT is available to all Earth educators and we encourage you to visit activity pages that you've drawn from in the past, look for the CCT link, and share your experiences with your peers.