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 51 - 60 of 886 matches
Indiana River Meanders Mapping Exercise part of Teaching Activities
Emily Zawacki, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
In Indiana, major rivers and their tributaries cross much of the state. These rivers can produce significant hazards related to flooding and erosion, which threaten nearby residents and infrastructure. Rivers are ...
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Topographic differencing: Earthquake along the Wasatch fault part of Teaching Activities
Chelsea Scott, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
After a big earthquake happens people ask, 'Where did the earthquake occur? How big was it? What type of fault was activated?' We designed an undergraduate laboratory exercise in which students learn how ...
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Cross-Scale Interactions part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ; Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia
Environmental phenomena are often driven by multiple factors that interact across different spatial and temporal scales. In freshwater lakes and reservoirs worldwide, phytoplankton blooms are increasing in ...
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Working with Climate Change Data part of Introductory Courses:Activities
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 use spreadsheets to create graphs data related to climate change: sunspots, insolation, carbon dioxide, and global ...
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Unit 4: Comparing risks at different volcanoes part of Monitoring Volcanoes and Communicating Risks
Rachel Teasdale (California State University Chico) and Kaatje van der Hoeven Kraft (Whatcom Community College)
Students assess the risks from three different volcanoes based on the Risk Equation, Risk = Hazard x Value x Vulnerability. The three volcanoes--Fuego Guatemala, Rinjani Indonesia, and Moana Loa Hawaii--have ...
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Expedition Sediments: Mud's journey through the watershed part of Teaching Activities
Jessie Turner, Old Dominion University
Expedition Sediments is a game-in-a-lesson that allows students to explore the movement of sediments through watersheds by moving around the classroom. Through a fun game, this lesson explores how grains of ...
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Unit 3: Field Geophysical Measurements part of Evaluating the Health of an Urban Wetland Using Electrical Resistivity
Compiled by Lee Slater, Rutgers University Newark (lslater@newark.rutgers.edu)
Download a ZIP file of this Unit
Near-surface geophysical measurements are performed by moving sensors across the earth's surface. Active geophysical sensors transmit a signal into the earth and record a returned signal that contains ...
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Measuring Plate Motion with GPS: Iceland | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
This lesson teaches middle and high school students to understand the architecture of GPS—from satellites to research quality stations on the ground. This is done with physical models and a presentation. Then students learn to interpret data for the station's position through time ("time series plots"). Students represent time series data as velocity vectors and add the vectors to create a total horizontal velocity vector. They apply their skills to discover that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is rifting Iceland. They cement and expand their understanding of GPS data with an abstraction using cars and maps. Finally, they explore GPS vectors in the context of global plate tectonics.
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Unit 2: Kilauea Hawai'i - Monday Morning Meeting at the USGS Hawai'i Volcano Observatory part of Monitoring Volcanoes and Communicating Risks
Kaatje van der Hoeven Kraft, Whatcom Community College and Rachel Teasdale, California State University-Chico
How do volcanologists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory monitor volcanoes? In a jigsaw format, students first work in teams to learn one of the four volcano monitoring data sets (GPS, Tilt, Seismic and InSAR) and ...
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Converging Tectonic Plates Demonstration part of Geodesy:Activities
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
During this demo, participants use springs and a map of the Pacific Northwest with GPS vectors to investigate the stresses and surface expression of subduction zones, specifically the Juan de Fuca plate diving beneath the North American plate.
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