Playing with maps

May 30, 2007

Okay, geography teachers — you’ve got a whole summer to figure out how to make geography fun and the most rewarding class your kids will take next year.

By then, Delta and Dawn the whales will be out of the Sacramento River (heck, they’re probably under the Golden Gate as I write this), so this map from the Sacramento Bee won’t be anything of great interest.  I found it via Google Maps Mania, though — and that site promises to provide a barrage of wonderful and bizarre maps.  Surely there will be other maps.  How about this post about street views of major cities?  If you have a live internet connection and a projector, you can show this stuff in real time.

Or, if you’re studying global warming, you can use this map to show what disappears if the ocean rises 1 meter, or 14 meters (from the post, “50 Things You Can Do With Google Maps“) Especially if your city is near the ocean, you can have your kids print these maps out and write a story about what it’s like to watch the ocean take back the land they grew up with.  (I wish the map would allow one to drop the level of the ocean, too — a lot more what ifs, and a lot more opportunities to discuss things like the migration of humans to America 37,000 years ago . . .)

I really liked this one:  What’s on the other side of the world?  In my childhood, more than once we set out to dig a hole to China.  Of course, had we gone straight through the Earth, we’d probably have found the Indian Ocean.   It’s a silly application — just the sort of thing that gets a class talking about and playing with maps, looking at the globe, and making the associations that qualify as “critical thinking” at test time.

If you can’t make a warmup, discussion or project out of the materials you find at that site, you need a Margarita (if you’re in Texas; perhaps a beer if you’re in Ontario, Canada).

Go have fun.

1 Comment | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Lesson plans, On-line education, On-line learning, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Searching for origins of life in Yellowstone’s hot springs

April 17, 2007

A few hours ago I posted a notice on satellite studies of the uplifting of a part of the Yellowstone Caldera, and I suggested some (weak) links to how to use it in the classroom. In passing I noted that the volcanic rock site southwest of Yellowstone, the Craters of the Moon National Monument, had been used to show astronauts what the Moon would be like when they landed Apollo missions there.

Yellowstone and especially its volcanic features also provided dramatic insights to the origins of life on Earth, especially the rise of life in hot water. These findings advanced the science we now call astrobiology, or the search for life on other planets.

This evening I stumbled across an interesting feature: A full text of a classic 1978 book on thermophilic life in Yellowstone, explaining in greater detail the research conducted there and its significance in astrobiology and evolution. Thomas D. Brock’s book, Thermophilic microorganisms and life at high temperatures (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1978; 465 pages) is just sitting there, online, for anyone to read. Thermophilic microorganisms, book cover
In this book there is more real science to this one tiny facet of the study of the evolution of life than there is in the entirety of the intelligent design political movement.

I wonder what other gems there may be in that digital collection at the University of Wisconsin.

Below the fold: The frontispiece. Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Books, Darwin, Education, Evolution, Geography - Physical, History, Intelligent Design, Natural history, On-line learning, Public libraries, Science, Space exploration | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Geography learning, on-line

March 22, 2007

Do your students have access to computers?

Test Your Geography Knowledge may seem a little elementary; alas — or maybe “hooray!” — it goes over exactly the sort of simple stuff I find too many high school students don’t have:  Basic political geography.   It beats Microsoft’s solitaire for in-class timewasting.  (This is a show-off site for a programmer and company, Lizard Point; look at other stuff at the site, and think of what you can do with it.)

That site has a link to Quiz School.  On-line quizzes, that you invent, that you can put into your classroom weblog — wonderful idea.  What can you do with this tool?  (It wouldn’t hurt you at all to post links to your quizzes here, would it?)

Back to geography:  You’ll also want to check out Sheppard Software, and the collection of geography games there.  The variety of games is quite outstanding — I even found one related to forestry.

Tip of the old scrub brush to SSBG’s blogroll.

1 Comment | Education, Education blogs, Geography - Political, On-line education, On-line learning, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

$100 laptop idea rolls on

January 5, 2007

One of its architects, Seymour Papert, lies in a Boston hospital (but out of intensive care) recovering from a head injury suffered in a collision with a motorbike in Hanoi in early December, but the idea of equipping tens of millions of students around the world with inexpensive, wireless-ready laptop computers continues to roll towards implementation.

The Christian Science Monitor carries an editorial more full of hope than opinion, on January 5, 2007, about the computer project. The laptops have been dubbed “XO.”

For billions of parents who earn only a few dollars a day, paying for a child’s education – books, etc. – often gets neglected. Many simple solutions that break that cycle of poverty have been tried and have failed. Now another one is on the horizon: a “$100 laptop.”

While noting past errors in sending technology to the third world, the Monitor cites some numbers from implementation that are quite dramatic, if accurate: Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Classroom technology, Education, On-line education, On-line learning, Public education, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, XO laptops | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

An MIT education, on-line

September 26, 2006

Occasionally we visit the use of technology in education. It seems to me that our technical acumen far outstrips our serious application of technology to learning, and we should be trying to close the gap.

MIT offers OpenCourseWare, which is a large catalog of offerings, on line. It is a step towards realizing the potential of on-line learning:

a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world. It is true to MIT’s values of excellence, innovation, and leadership.

MIT OCW:

  • Is a publication of MIT course materials
  • Does not require any registration
  • Is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity
  • Does not provide access to MIT faculty

Historians, especially teachers wishing to crib for great syllabi, will want to look at offerings like the courses from Pauline Maier. Economists should explore offerings in economics, too.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, History, On-line education, On-line learning, Teaching, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

E-learning courtesy

August 21, 2006

Setting up the on-line portion of a college course is rather new.  I found this ancient-by-internet-terms Michael Leddy at Orange Crate Art suggests students need to show manners and sense in e-mailing professors, in a well-crafted post, How to e-mail a professor. 

The comments provide good advice for professors, too.

Leave a Comment » | Education, On-line education, On-line learning, Teaching, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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