BY BILL FERRIS
America runs on electricity. And coal, and wind power, and hydroelectric, and Dunkin Donuts. Powering a Nation, a multimedia project from the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication, looks at the cost of our current energy situation, the possible alternatives, as well as the consequences of making the sorts of wholesale changes that green energy would bring.
With the Health Care Reform debate in the forefront of national news, other major legislation, such as the Climate Change Bill, has been pushed aside. However, I have no doubt that the climate change issue will rise to the top again. As a teacher, I feel it is my responsibility to make scientifically literate students able to engage in reasonable and logical debate, using sound evidence as their basis. There are many tools available to help me with this, and the United States Global Change Research Program has recently come out with a new one, the Climate Change Wildlife and Wildlands Toolkit for Educators.
BY BILL FERRIS
Win a trip to Antarctica. Yes, that’s supposed to be an incentive.
PolarTREC will send 36 teachers to the Arctic or Antarctic to work with polar research teams. They’ll take a mittens-on approach to learning about atmospheric chemistry, biology, history and culture in the coldest places on earth. (more…)
If Friday’s post didn’t instill in you a healthy fear and respect for hurricanes, I don’t know what will. Okay, so maybe I’m inflating my writing skills, but I hope it was useful. I promise that this posting is going to be interesting and useful.
I’m a huge fan of the social media blog Mashable, and this posting about tracking Hurricane Bill through social media is another example of them just destroying the competition. Okay, so Hurricane Bill is yesterday’s news, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use their storm-tracking suggestions for future weather patterns.
We are currently right in the middle of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season, having started on May 28th with Tropical Depression One and traditionally running until November 30th. All in all, it has been a pretty quiet season. Only one formation, Hurricane Bill, has achieved hurricane status, but even then it was relegated to messing up air travel schedules. Well, it almost managed to take out a magician, too. Almost…you win again, Blaine.
The US Geological Survey offers a comprehensive hurricane website where the public can access important storm information. (more…)
BY DAVID BARGER
Ahh, summer! Nothing brings out the desire to spend time outdoors like sunshine and long days. Cookouts, beach trips, amusement parks…there are plenty of ways to enjoy our summer days. But when the allergies and mosquitoes and 100-degree days inevitably arrive, some seek out more indoor pursuits. You can have the best of both worlds when you explore America’s National Parks from the comfort of your own home with the photos and multimedia collection at the National Park Service website.
BY BILL FERRIS
Summertime means fishing, camping trips, taking Junior to the zoo, and hitting the beach. All of those activities put you into contact with the wonders (or if you’re unlucky, the terrors) of the animal kingdom. July’s random roundup brings you the best Instructify posts that feature critters other than humans.
Tune in to The Great Turtle Race
The Great Turtle Race raises public awareness of leatherback turtle migration, plus threats to the creature’s survival, through the magic of sports. The site has lots of nifty race stats, such as how many hour-long dives each turtle makes. You can cheer on your favorite turtle, and elect to receive daily updates on how it’s doing in the field.
It being pretty early in the summer, I know you’re not really thinking about developing that perfect lesson plan. However, in mid-September, when you’re frazzled from start of school madness, parents’ night, and you realize you don’t have a lesson for tomorrow, you’ll want to refer back to this website, Science with NOAA Research.
Kids these days, you know? They don’t care about the state of the world. They don’t care about endangered species. They don’t care about the environment. If you’re a teacher, you’ve probably heard statements such as these (and maybe even thought them a few times yourself in moments of frustraction). It is up to us as educators to broaden our students’ horizons and give them a reason to care. Field Trip Earth is one place you can go to expose them to some world views, and hopefully inspire them to conserve.
Check out these upcoming educational grants, as listed on Grant Wrangler.
Samsung Focus on Learning Grant Program — Deadline: June 15
Need a Samsung 850DX document camera? Samsung is giving away 50 of them to educators who can demonstrate a need for them.
Universe Adventure Student Video Contest — Deadline: June 15
The Berkley Center for Cosmological Physics and the Honeywell Corporation will give $1,500 in money and new equipment to the students who can create a YouTube video that “demonstrates one of the key fundamental scientific principles or physical laws that governs cosmology or astrophysics in the universe.”
Thomson Gale TEAMS Award –Deadline: June 15
Thomson Gale and the Library Media Connection will award $2,500 cash to three K-12 public or private school teachers who have collaborated with media specialists in the past school year.
New Science Teacher Academy — Deadline: June 30
Second- and third-year science teachers can become a fellow at the New Science Teacher Academy for one year by winning this grant from the National Science Teacher Association.
Coca-Cola Foundation Education Grants –Deadline: Rolling
Coke will support all kinds of educational causes, including dropout prevention, maintaining water quality, recycling and maintaining access to education programs. Plus there’s no deadline. Take a look at their application guidelines and see what you can propose. -BILL FERRIS
Google does it again. This time it’s a new layer for Google Earth that uses NASA-funded maps to show carbon dioxide emissions from various sources. Of course, you can download Google Earth 5 and get the information so you can make your own maps, but you can view an example here.
In a classroom, maps like this can have many applications. The most obvious would be in a science class if you were studying climate change. You could compare and contrast the emissions from electricity production and the industrial sector. Additionally, you could use the map to study your own area’s carbon footprint and compare it with other areas. Students could use the data within Google Earth to create a “tour” showing how various sectors and/or geographical areas contribute to carbon dioxide emissions.
I’m sure that once you play around with the maps and look at the data on your own, you’ll find many ways to integrate it into your own classroom. -REBECCAH HAINES
USA CO2 Emissions from fossil fuels 2002
Enter a new world with lesson plans for Google Earth
Google Earth 5 adds more educational features
Instructifeature: It’s getting hot in here! Teaching about climate change
Your students may or may not know the importance of estuaries. They may not even know what they are. You can solve both of those knowledge deficiencies by taking them on an online field trip to Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in coastal Alabama. EstuaryLive presents two live broadcasts from Weeks Bay on May 15 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern time.
Your students can learn about estuary wildlife, ecosystems, as well as the threats each of those components face. Since it’s live, you and your class can interact with the field trip leaders (check the technical requirements to make sure you can view this virtual field trip without any net-based hangups). If you can’t make the May 15 broadcasts, you can view archived field trips as well.
EstuaryLive is a great opportunity to learn a lot about environmental science without having to trudge through the mud. -BILL FERRIS
Go hug a tree at the the Sustainable Forestry Teachers’ Academy
Photo credit: DCSL on Flickr.
Earth Day is coming up on April 22. With that holiday approaching and the glorious springtime weather, aren’t you in the mood to get outside and do something for the environment? Well, if you’re feeling this way, it is likely that under your leadership, your students can attain this feeling also. I think that one of the most current and important topics for educators feeling the “Go-Green” bug is climate change. This year, climate change has been one of my environmental education focuses with my students, and I wanted to share with you some of the excellent resources I’ve found for teaching about this important topic.
I started with a book called How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming by Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch. This book is a great place to start teaching about climate change. It presents the scientific evidence for climate change in a straightforward, understandable, and readable way. My 7th graders had no trouble comprehending the one to two page vignettes on serious research. Most of the chosen research highlighted in the book involved collaborations between scientists and students or other “regular” citizens. Also important for students, the book is not all gloom and doom. It presents the evidence that scientists have gathered, explains their conclusions drawn from evidence, then completely skips the “we’re all going to die” mentality that some doomsayers have, and gives students real options for taking action. As an educator, I appreciated this truthful-but-positive spin. Also as an educator, I appreciated the separate teacher’s guide for the book. While not all of the activities were flashy, it gave me some good ideas on where to start with students.
Inspired by the book, I have gotten my students involved in a couple of citizen science projects in which we are helping climate scientists and others track seasonal changes in wildlife and vegetation. While there are many options for this kind of involvement, the two I have chosen are Journey North’s Tulip Garden project, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bird Sleuth program. Both of these programs allow for what I think is an easy entry into the world of citizen science. Both also allow for online data entry and visualization, allowing you as the teacher to use that data in many ways for various projects with students. Check out this year’s tulip map and see the little red dot on Morehead City — that’s us! Journey North also offers many other data collection projects besides the tulip garden project, and most are free or cost very little to participate. For example, I spent about $40 on the tulip bulbs to plant at my school. Granted, I had received a Bright Ideas Grant from my local electrical cooperative for my climate change study, but even without the grant, a couple of parents may be willing to sponsor. The Bird Sleuth program also offers both free and paid resources that you can explore through their website.
In addition to having my students participate in citizen science so they could get that hands-on feeling, I used several websites and blogs in my classroom. First, I happened to hear this podcast on NPR’s Science Friday just a few weeks ago. During the program, they talked about the USA National Phenology Network. In case you don’t know, phenology is the study of regular seasonal changes, and something that climate scientists study closely and use as evidence for climate change. Through this website, you (or your class) could become a phenological observer, providing valuable information to scientists nationwide. It would allow one more way for your students to get involved.
For background information, I used Windows to the Universe. It has pages of text, images, and multimedia about many earth-science topics, including climate change. An excellent feature of the site is the ability to select from three different reading levels on the text pages — a must for an inclusive classroom. Another reference is the EPA’s Climate Change for Kids site. It offers another source of text, images, games, links, and other media to help your students gain background information on climate change. Of course NASA also offers an excellent website for up-to-date information at Global Climate Change from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website offers some interesting interactives as well as text and images to help explain the evidence for climate change. As an added benefit, you can subscribe to an RSS feed from the site. This would be a great way to integrate the information on a more regular basis in your classroom. Finally, for a more editorial point of view, I look to Dot Earth. This is a blog published by the New York Times that “examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits.” You could use posts from some of these blogs as starting points for verbal debates or position papers.
I hope I have given you some ideas that you can integrate into your classroom in celebration of Earth Day. Of course, don’t wait for Earth Day to encourage your students to get out there and make a difference. And if you’re not convinced that this is a worthwhile use of academic time, take a gander at this video. This man’s logic seems pretty solid, and all of us, especially those of us responsible for educating the next generation, need to take action and make a difference. -REBECCAH HAINES
How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate from Amazon
USA National Phenology Network
Global Climate Change from NASA
How to successfully debate the climate skeptic in your life
Scientific American explores whether cloud seeding works
Photo credit: CRASH-candy on Flickr.
Quick whale facts: go! Whales are a member of the Cetacea order of animals. Narwhals are the magical unicorn ones. Whales eat a variety of stuff, including marine life, plankton and wooden puppets who wish to become real boys. In a strange way, whale song audio tracks are good for both relaxation and for haunted house soundtracks. Blue whales are the big ones.
Okay, so maybe not all of those facts are true. Some might only have just a loose cultural reference, but that’s still enough to fake people into thinking you know what you’re talking about. Meanwhile, you’ve successfully made a hasty escape. Yet out of all my questionable facts, there’s no denying the one about blue whales. Accounting for weight and volume it is the largest known living animal. Need some proof? Check out this life size blue whale from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.
With one giant visual that you can navigate by a smaller inset image, this is a rather creative way to demonstrate the actual dimensions as they compare to your computer screen size. Even the coolest monitor seems a bit dwarfed. Without sounding too 1997 cheesy, the internet is a window for looking out at the world — no, wait, that is too cheesy.
The WDCS wants to get the message out about the endangered status of the blue whale, with the distinct message that this might be the last life-size blue whale you see. Right there’s a nice tie-in for ecology/environmental science lessons. Moby Dick was a different species of whale, so maybe this is slightly less ideal for your Herman Melville lesson. Maybe in a technology lesson you could use it to illustrate how images appear on different monitor aspect ratios? I’m starting to grasp at straws now. If you can think of other ways to use this giant whale then share it in the comments below! –NICK YINGLING
Whalenet: Providing you boatloads of information since 1993
Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Briny Deep? Monsters of the Deep Sea
It’s time again for our random roundup. This month’s theme: NASA, pioneers of space and subjects of an awful lot of posts.
Do-it-yourself is in, even with podcasting at NASA!
It seems that every time you turn around these days someone’s encouraging you to complete a DIY project. Why pay for someone else to do it when you can do it yourself? Apparently, NASA has the same attitude on its website on Do-It-Yourself Podcasts.
Set the controls for the closest planet to the sun: NASA Mission to Mercury
This site includes up-to-the-minute clocks that record the elapsed time of the mission as well as the Orbit Insertion time. Watch the actual August 3, 2004 launch of Messenger from mission control. You can take your class through a tour of images already taken by Messenger as it zooms toward Mercury.
Blast Off with the NASA Kids’ Club
NASA Kids’ Club is a great way to learn more about space exploration. It’s got great pictures, games and activities that will pique the interest of space-minded kids. As a no-cost way to learn about the space program, the NASA Kids’ Club is the Right Stuff.
Observe NASA’s Earth Observatory
What if we were able to turn our telescopes around and get a closer look at what is happening right below our feet? The folks at NASA have done just that with their Earth Observatory site. Teachers, head right for the Experiments tab and give your students interactive ways to study global warming and plant biomes around the world. If you love reading blogs (and I know you do!), check out the Expedition to Siberia blog that offers almost daily updates and pictures of this fascinating trip.
Cool satellite image from the inauguration
Check out this great picture from the presidential inauguration. As the GeoEye-1 satellite hurtled through the cosmos, it took this snapshot to commemorate the historic occasion. That’s a lot of people! Not only that, I now know the roof of the Capitol is tarheel blue.
Observe Mars in 3D
Still have some of those promotional 3D glasses kicking around from after the Superbowl? Fire up one of NASA’s 3D image galleries to take your students on a tour of Mars.
moxie design studios
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