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 Show all
- Affective Domain 1 match
- Assessment 5 matches
- Data, Simulations, Models 33 matches
- Google Earth 26 matches
- Metacognition 1 match
- NGSS 105 matches
- Online Teaching 29 matches
- Problem Solving 3 matches
- Quantitative Skills 29 matches
- Service Learning 3 matches
- Spatial Thinking 10 matches
- Teaching in the Field 74 matches
- Undergrad Research 3 matches
- Visualization 2 matches
Teach the Earth > Enhancing your Teaching
Grade Level
Results 41 - 50 of 246 matches
Fault Models for Teaching About Plate Tectonics part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
Modified from an activity by Larry Braile (Purdue University) by TOTLE (Teachers on the Leading Edge) Project and further improved by ShakeAlert.
This short interactive activity has learners to manipulate fault blocks to better understand different types of earthquake-generating faults in different tectonic settings--extensional, convergent, and strike-slip. Fault models aid in visualizing and understanding faulting and plate motions because the instructor and their students can manipulate a three-dimensional model for a true hands-on experience.
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Human Wave: Modeling P and S Waves part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) and ShakeAlert
Lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, learners are the medium that P and S waves travel through in this simple, but effective demonstration. Once "performed", the principles of P and S waves will not be easily forgotten. This demonstration explores two of the four main ways energy propagates from the hypocenter of an earthquake as P and S seismic waves. The physical nature of the Human Wave demonstration makes it a highly engaging kinesthetic learning activity that helps students grasp, internalize and retain abstract information.
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Earthquake Machine part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) and ShakeAlert
In this activity, learners work collaboratively in small groups to explore the earthquake cycle by using a physical model. Attention is captured through several short video clips illustrating the awe-inspiring power of ground shaking resulting from earthquakes. To make students' prior knowledge explicit and activate their thinking about the topic of earthquakes, each student writes their definition of an earthquake on a sticky note. Next, through a collaborative process, small groups of students combine their individual definitions to create a consensus definition for an earthquake.
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Unit 2.1: Geodetic survey of an outcrop for road cut design part of Analyzing High Resolution Topography with TLS and SfM
Yonathan Admassu (James Madison University)
John Paul Ligush (James Madison University)
Matthew Gribbin (James Madison University)
This unit offers an alternative application for high-resolution topographic data from an outcrop. Using engineering geology methods and data collection from TLS and/or SfM, students design safe "road ...
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Learn more about this review process.
Unit 2: Kinematic GPS/GNSS Methods part of High Precision Positioning with Static and Kinematic GPS
Ben Crosby, Idaho State University
The application of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in the earth sciences has become commonplace. GNSS data can be collected rapidly and compared in common reference frames. Real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS ...
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Learn more about this review process.
Unit 2.1: Measuring Topography with Kinematic GPS/GNSS part of High Precision Positioning with Static and Kinematic GPS
Ben Crosby, Idaho State University
Kinematic GNSS surveys can provide a rapid means of collecting widely distributed, high-precision topographic data. The advantages of this technique over optical instruments such as a total station are that it only ...
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Learn more about this review process.
Unit 2.2: Change Detection with Kinematic GPS/GNSS part of High Precision Positioning with Static and Kinematic GPS
Ben Crosby, Idaho State University
Though it may be difficult to perceive, landscapes are constantly changing form and position. High-precision GNSS is one of a handful of techniques capable of quantifying these changes and is a key component of ...
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Learn more about this review process.
Unit 1: GPS/GNSS Fundamentals part of High Precision Positioning with Static and Kinematic GPS
Ben Crosby, Idaho State University
The constellations of satellites orbiting our planet enable high-precision positioning not just for consumer or survey applications but also for geoscience research such as detecting plate motions, landslide ...
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Learn more about this review process.
Grand Canyon Cross Section Lab part of GET Spatial Learning:Teaching Activities
Doug Lombardi, University of Maryland-College Park
× Students examine a geologic map of the Grand Canyon and two imaginary vertical cores through canyon stratigraphy. They use these data to construct a cross-section across the canyon and to answer questions ...
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Unit 1: The Food-Energy-Water Connection part of Food as the Foundation for Healthy Communities
Richard D. Schulterbrandt Gragg III, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University; John Warford, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University; Cynthia Hewitt, Morehouse College; Akin Akinyemi, Florida State University; Cheryl Young, Heritage University
This unit is designed to function as three days of instruction in an introductory urban planning, environmental science/studies or public health course.
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Learn more about this review process.