Sticks and Stones Game
Students will play Sticks and Stones, a game based on the Apache game "Throw Sticks," which was played at multi-nation celebrations. Students will collect data, investigate the likelihood of various moves, and use basic ideas of expected value to determine the average number of turns needed to win a game.
Chemical Weathering
This site provides visual resources that illustrate the process of chemical weathering. Animations demonstrate how temperature and precipitation affect the evolution of parent material from highly resistant primary minerals to both secondary minerals and minerals in solution, as well as showing rates of weathering of various common minerals. A collection of photographs gives examples of chemical weathering in both natural outcrops and constructed features such as tombstones and carvings. These r
Teaching Mineralogy: A Digital Collection of Teaching Materials
This site from the "On the Cutting Edge" workshop series features a collection of resources for teaching mineralogy at the undergraduate level. These digital teaching materials are designed for faculty to use while designing new courses, enhancing existing courses, or simply looking for new ideas in teaching mineralogy. Students will also find this collection helpful for finding supplemental study materials and for doing research projects in mineralogy.
Solar System Animations
This site features Flash animations that illustrate phases of the moon, distances between planets, total, partial, and annular eclipses, and solar system formation that includes an example of the impact that created the moon. These resources are suitable for use in lectures, labs, or other teaching activities.
Martin Van Buren's "Return to the Soil"
is a curriculum-oriented site using the home, named Lindenwald, the eighth President moved to after his term in office to introduce a discussion of Van Buren and his times. The site contains photos and drawings of Lindenwald as well as discussions how Van Buren interacted with other political leaders of the day, like Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun. The site offers many questions and suggestions for student assignments.
American Visionaries: Thomas Moran
features paintings and sketches of the noted American landscape painter. Moran's pencil and watercolor field sketches and paintings captured the grandeur and documented the extraordinary terrain and natural features of the Yellowstone region. His artwork was presented to members of Congress by park proponents and helped inspire Congress to establish the National Park System in 1916.
Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
This resource presents a brief overview the glaciation that created the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Links are provided to maps of the region, information about coastal geology, glaciers, volcanoes, mountains, and recommended reading.
You Decide: Is the Bush administration doing enough to protect the environment?
This educational guide focuses on environmental issues and the role of the Bush administration in safeguarding the energy requirements of the nation while at the same time protecting the environment from pollution and toxic emissions. Students are invited to examine the arguments on both sides of the debate, developing critical thinking skills as they work through the activities. Students will learn how to support their arguments with evidence and reason. It is expected that at the end of this g
What's Growing in That Dish?
In this lesson, students will view the clips of the video discussing the discovery of penicillin and the scientific discovery process. They will then run their own open-ended experiments to see how body molds and bacteria respond to variable substances.
Country Studies/Area Handbooks
This site presents a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of countries throughout the world. It examines the interrelationships of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural factors. At present, 101 countries and regions are covered.
Immigration
This site looks at European and Chinese immigration to the U.S., early 20th century immigration documents, 350 years of Jewish life in America, America as a religious refuge (17th century), Irish words, the Tenement Museum in New York City, and the first Yiddish cookbook in America. The website includes images of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, stories of immigrants, and interactive timelines and maps showing immigration patterns.
Emergence of Advertising in America
This site presents over 9,000 images relating to the early history of advertising in the U.S. Materials include cookbooks, photographs of billboards, print advertisements, trade cards, calendars, almanacs, and leaflets for various products. Together, these images illuminate the early evolution of this ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture.
Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories
The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement. It is important to note that all of the interviewees spoke sixty or more years after the end of their enslavement, and
Zoom into Maps
Maps help us make sense of our world. A sampling of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division’s 4.5 million treasures has been digitized and is available in Map Collections: 1500 - 2003. This activity introduces historical maps from the American Memory collections. A graphic organizer, for analysis and note taking, and a set of guiding questions for each type of map have been provided.
Analyzing a Map: What are maps and what do they do? What common characteristics do they have? Most m
Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Arts Festivals, 1938-1943
This site consists of sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation created by John Wesley Work III in 1941 and by Lewis Jones and Willis Laurence James in March, June, and July 1943 at the folk festival at Fort Valley College (now Fort Valley State University), Fort Valley, Georgia.
Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950
This site highlights letters Guthrie wrote in the early 1940s after moving to New York City, where he pursued broadcasting and recording careers, met artists and social activists, and gained a reputation as a songwriter and performer. The site includes a biographical essay, a timeline of Guthrie's life, and an encoded finding aid of Guthrie materials at the Library of Congress.
Moldenhauer Archives
This site presents 130 music manuscripts, letters, and materials representative of a 3,500-item collection documenting the history of Western music from the medieval period through the modern era. Essays by musicologists discuss items from Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Handel, Liszt, Mozart, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and other composers.
Florida Folklife from the WPS Collections, 1937-1942
Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections is a multiformat ethnographic field collection documenting African-American, Arabic, Bahamian, British-American, Cuban, Greek, Italian, Minorcan, Seminole, and Slavic cultures throughout Florida. Recorded by Robert Cook, Herbert Halpert, Zora Neale Hurston, Stetson Kennedy, Alton Morris, and others in conjunction with the Florida Federal Writers' Project, the Florida Music Project, and the Joint Committee on Folk Arts of the Work Projects Administration,
An introduction to teacher research
Every day, teachers develop lesson plans, evaluate student work, and share outcomes with students, parents, and administrators. Teacher research is simply a more intentional and systematic version of what good teachers already do.
Bioinformatics in the Biology Classroom
This educational journal article addresses the implementation of bioinformatics in the classroom. The author explains how bioinformatics could play a key role for science students pursuing higher education, foster inquiry learning of content that has often been taught in a dry manner, provide the thread that ties classes together, improve biology teaching, enhance the learning of biotech issues and ethics, expose students to real-world science, and significantly help to reform biology teaching a
