Exercise 2: Introduction to coordinate systems and projections
Barb Tewksbury, Hamilton College
Barbara and David Tewksbury, Hamilton College Summary This exercise gives students personal experience with data sets that have spatial reference "issues" so that they learn first hand both why it ...

Relative and Absolute Geologic Time with Maps and Spreadsheets
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and takes ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students apply stratigraphic principles for relative dating and basic equations of isotopic systems for absolute dating and ...

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 ...

Plate Tectonics with Maps and Spreadsheets
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students learn about plate tectonic boundaries, earthquakes in a subducting slab, and volcanic hotspot tracks.

Exploring Marine Sediments Using Google Earth
Kristen St. John, James Madison University
This exercise uses empirical data and Google Earth to explore the surficial distribution of marine sediments in the modern ocean. Over 2500 sites are plotted with access to original data. We recommend first ...

Relative Dating with Art
Jennifer Cholnoky, Skidmore College
This activity asks students to make observations of an artwork and to deduce the sequence of events or processes that occurred during the creation of the piece.

Mt. St. Helens Topographic Profiles
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1-1.5 hours to complete. Students study topographic maps of Mt. St. Helens before and after the eruption of May 18, 1980, and draw two topographic ...

Beetles, Mammals, and Plants: Is Climate Driving Range Shifts Since the Last Glacial Maximum
Christian George, High Point University
In this exercise, students will use the Neotoma database and ArcGIS Online to create a distribution map of modern collection localities of beetle taxa associated with an assemblage of fossil beetles from the Conklin Quarry site in eastern Iowa. a data rich exercise to help students discover how organisms move in response to climate change

Exercise 5: Choropleth Map of the Happiest States
Barb Tewksbury, Hamilton College
Barbara and David Tewksbury, Hamilton College Summary Students create choropleth maps by creating data tables in Excel and merging them with existing shapefiles for US states; they also evaluate the effectiveness ...

Exploring Spreadsheets with Microsoft Excel
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students work with a large set of earthquake data, examine types of charts available in Excel, and use a spreadsheet to ...