Exemplary Teaching Activities
Beginning in 2011, On the Cutting Edge began a process to review the extensive collection of activities submitted by workshop participants and members of the geoscience community. With the transition of the On the Cutting Edge program into NAGT the review process is now being used to broadly review online teaching activities relevant to NAGT's community of Earth educators. Through this review processes activities are scored on 5 elements: scientific veracity; alignment of goals, activity, and assessment; pedagogical effectiveness; robustness; and completeness of the description. The activities that score very highly in these areas become part of the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection and are featured below.
You may also be interested in the full collection of teaching activities.
Subject: Geoscience
Theme: Teach the Earth
Grade Level
Results 1 - 10 of 891 matches
Frequency of Large Earthquakes part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
Jennifer Pickering
Using the IRIS Earthquake Browser tool, students gather data to support a claim about how many large (Mw 8+) earthquakes will happen globally each year. This activity provides scaffolded experience downloading data and manipulating data within a spreadsheet.
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Discover Plate Tectonics part of Guided Inquiry Introductory Geology Labs:Activities
Angela Daneshmand, Santiago Canyon College
This is a student-centered activity for a synchronous online course where students access google slides to complete during a video conferencing session (eg. Zoom) in break out rooms. Students will be introduced to ...
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Getting started with Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope
Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry method uses overlapping images to create a 3D point cloud of an object or landscape. It can be applied to everything from fault scarps to landslides to topography. This ...
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A Toast to a Scientist - Celebrating Identity and Accomplishments part of Teaching Activities
Laura Guertin, Penn State Brandywine
To bring attention to a more inclusive population of scientists and to help students develop their own science identity, students are assigned to write a speech that could be given as a "toast" at an ...
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Understanding Doppler radar radial velocity fields part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Spatial Reasoning with GeoClick Questions:Examples
Aryeh Drager, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
This activity is designed to help students learn how to interpret Doppler radial velocity radar images with meteorological applications, as well as giving students a chance to practice their spatial skills.
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Igneous Rocks Inquiry Lab (In Person) part of Guided Inquiry Introductory Geology Labs:Activities
Jennifer Cholnoky, Skidmore College; Mary Abercrombie, Florida Gulf Coast University
Average inquiry level: Guided inquiry This is an in-person inquiry lab for igneous rocks, but it could be converted to an online lab through use of igneous rock photos available online (see links provided in the ...
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Unit 1: Exploring Harrier Meadow, an Urban Wetland System part of Evaluating the Health of an Urban Wetland Using Electrical Resistivity
Lee Slater, Rutgers University-Newark
Students will conduct a virtual exploration of Harrier Meadow, a salt marsh in the New Jersey Meadowlands. They will identify its vulnerability to pollution, its tidal connection to the Hackensack Estuary and the ...
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Macro-Scale Feedbacks part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia
Environmental phenomena are often driven by multiple factors that interact across space and over time. In freshwater lakes and reservoirs worldwide, carbon cycling and subsequent carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane ...
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Episodic tremor and slip: The Case of the Mystery Earthquakes | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Earthquakes in western Washington and Oregon are to be expected—the region lies in the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Offshore, the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate subducts under the North American plate, from northern California to British Columbia. The region, however, also experiences exotic seismicity— Episodic Tremor and Slip (ETS).In this lesson, your students study seismic and GPS data from the region to recognize a pattern in which unusual tremors--with no surface earthquakes--coincide with jumps of GPS stations. This is ETS. Students model ductile and brittle behavior of the crust with lasagna noodles to understand how properties of materials depend on physical conditions. Finally, they assemble their knowledge of the data and models into an understanding of ETS in subduction zones and its relevance to the millions of residents in Cascadia.
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Climate Change Effects on Lake Temperatures part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia; Mary Lofton, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Climate change is modifying the thermal structure of lakes around the globe. Because it is difficult to predict how lakes will respond to the many different aspects of climate change (e.g., altered temperature, ...
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