Field Trip Escape Iceland
Summary
Field Trip Escape Iceland: A Virtual Reality Field Trip and learning experience of Iceland geodiversity using escape room gamification. Students learn about physical geography and geodiversity to write a field report before the magma plume becomes active.
Context
Audience
Introductory to Physical Geography, AP Environmental Science
Skills and concepts that students must have mastered
Students need to have some familiarity with:
-Field note taking
-Some introductory level of physical geography and/or geology
-Some introductory level of landuse dynamics, people and the environment
-Some familiarity with Escape Rooms and Wordle-like activities
How the activity is situated in the course
The Escape Room is designed to both be stand alone or to be used as a sequence to exploratory exercises.
Goals
Content/concepts goals for this activity
The Escape Room is designed to offer textbook examples of physical geography features to explore plate tectonics, volcanism, glaciers, and coastal erosion and deposition. The series of webpages are linked with Wordle-like activities so that students must solve the puzzle to access the next study site and collect information to explore Iceland's geodiversity.
Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity
Identification and description of geodiverse physical phenomena, linkage of the patterns of geodiversity to earth system processes, synthesis of these topics, and fun!
Skills goals for this activity
- The activity is designed to improve identification, description aspects of field geography/geology and communication via field notes (sky observations, description of geographic setting, and unique observations the students have) and through report writing.
Description and Teaching Materials
All materials needed for the field trip are housed in the Virtual Learning Experiences on GeoEPIC. https://geoepic.app/lessons/field-trip-escape-iceland
References and Resources
References are found on each of the webpages for the virtual learning experience.
Gielstra, D., Cerveny, N.V., Gielstra, J., & Moorman, L. (2022). Virtual learning experience for dynamic earth science education: GeoEPIC's Escape Iceland. National Council for Geographic Education, October 14-15,2022. https://geoepic.app/lessons/field-trip-escape-iceland