Whatzzzup-Stream?
In this set of exercises, students will study rivers and waterways around them by using the Internet, maps, and their knowledge of local landscapes. The students will use an EPA Web site to investigate what is upstream and downstream of them. They will also look at graphs of flow in familiar river locations on a live U.S. Geological Survey Web site. Using small rocks and a washbasin, students will build a model that leads to extending their understanding of streams in different geographic locati
The Numbers Behind Hunger: Rate of Change
Following are a series of activities in which students apply various math skills to better understand the problems of world hunger and what steps are being taken to reduce the number of people without enough to eat. This activity looks at how the number of people affected by hunger is changing. Students will understand the dynamic nature of the problem and the challenges of reaching the Millennium Development Goal to reduce the number of people suffering from hunger by half by 2015. This is Acti
The Numbers Behind Hunger: Probability
Following are a series of activities in which students apply various math skills to better understand the problems of world hunger and what steps are being taken to reduce the number of people without enough to eat. This actions looks at probability from the perspective of reducing child mortality. This is Activity #4 of 5 in this lesson.
The Attack on Pearl Harbor
This selection contains actual video and photos of events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the actual attack, and the aftermath. A narrator outlines history leading up to the attack, the attack, and results of this historic event. ( 3:15)
The Harmful Algae Page
This NOAA sponsored website offers a collection of hyperlinks to red tide related articles, distribution maps, photographs, news, and meetings. Links include basic information about red tide, how red tide affects humans and ecosystems, the latest news about red tide and other harmful algal blooms (HABs), and information about red tide-based meetings and conferences.
Light at the Bottom of the Deep, Dark Ocean?
This Ocean Explorer interactive, hands-on lesson plan (PDF) leads students on an exploration of deepwater adaptations by addressing the focus question: What types of adaptations enable deep-sea fishes to survive and collect food in the darkness of the deep ocean? In the activity, students search for Skittles in a dark room while wearing goggles covered in blue cellophane to simulate deepwater feeding. This lesson plan includes a reproducible student handout and links to reference resources.
NASA CONNECT Team Extreme: The Statistics of Success
In NASA CONNECT, Team Extreme: The Statistics of Success, focuses on NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate and the teamwork required to produce a successful space mission. Students will learn about the numerous systems, skills and capabilities involved in a mission and how NASA manages and integrates these systems. Students will draw a parallel between the teamwork used in a NASA mission and find out how teamwork energizes the popular sport of auto racing. Grades 6-8.
World History Survey Course on the Web
World History teachers face many challenges to incorporating primary sources in their teaching—the pressures of coverage in survey courses, the lack of available materials, and inadequate training in dealing with unfamiliar sources from a range of cultures. World History Sources responds to these challenges (as well as the new opportunities offered by the Internet) by creating a website to help world history teachers and students locate, analyze, and learn from online primary sources and to fu
Encouraging Student Teachers to Document Reflective Practice
Students in a teacher education course document their learning from multimedia cases of effective teaching and share their reflections with their peers and teacher educators.
Setting Up a Successful Journalistic Learning Community
In this website, Wojcicki describes how participation in a journalistic learning community can motivate even the most recalcitrant student. The website includes sample copies of the newspaper, The Campanile and the magazine, Verde, which are examples of the kinds of student outcomes that can be achieved when students are excited about learning and have ownership of their learning and the product of their learning: the publications. Wojcicki's students have won several major national and internat
Pio Pico Researchers Participatory Action Research: From Classroom to Community, Transforming Teachi
Emily Wolk is a teacher of a group of students, aged 8-11 years old, called the Pio Pico Researchers. Together, since the group started in 1996, the group convinced the city of Santa Ana to install a signal light at one of the most dangerous intersections in the city, in the immediate vicinity of Pio Pico School. Wolk used an alternative inquiry method called Participatory Action-Research (PAR) with her students. The children used radar guns, plotted data on a computerized mapping system called
Earth Exploration Toolbook Chapter: Analyzing the Antarctic Ozone Hole
Users download and analyze satellite images showing the amount of ozone in the stratosphere. They interpret the images to identify the ozone "hole" that develops over Antarctica each summer, and compare its size from year to year. Using freely available image analysis software, ImageJ, users quantify the area of the Antarctic ozone hole each October from 1996 to 2004. Finally, they bring their measurements into a spreadsheet program and create a graph to document changes in the size of the ozone
Looking at Learning ... Again, Part 2 Workshop 1. Behind the Design
With Philip Sadler, Ed.D. Young children are natural designers and builders, but if their interest is not fostered, it may wane as they move through the grades. This workshop focuses on the use of simple design prototypes that children are asked to improve upon in order to meet a particular challenge. You will see these design challenges in action in middle school classrooms, as well as hear teachers discuss their experiences using designs with their students.,Phil Sadler, a science education re
Plus or Minus
Plus or Minus is a card game similar to the well known games "Crazy Eights" and "Uno". The rules have been modified so that players can work on their addition and subtraction skills.
Algebra One
This curriculum emphasizes a multi-representational approach to algebra, with concepts, results, and problems being expressed graphically, analytically, and verbally. It develops algebraic fluency by providing students with the skills needed to solve equations and perform important manipulations with numbers, variables, equations, and inequalities. In addition, the course develops proficiency with operations involving monomial and polynomial expressions. The main unifying themes of the course in
Prion Problem Space
Prions are relatively small proteins that display dramatically alternate conformations for similar primary structures. Abnormal conformations appear to cause fatal neurological diseases in a wide variety of mammals. Researchers are discovering the mechanisms behind these conformational changes, including differences that may lead to species barriers (or lack thereof) among exposed animals. How do these conformations differ?
How do small sequence differences affect susceptibility to conformationa
Creating Interactive Multimedia
This course will introduce students to some technologies, tools and techniques associated with the creation of interactive multimedia. The focus of the course will be on developing the capacity of professional educators to communicate effectively with professionals who contribute to the design and development of interactive multimedia. Students will be introduced to the characteristics of the elements of multimedia and to some tools and techniques commonly used in creation of multimedia. They wi
Poker and Strategic Thinking
In this course we will work from the idea that there is merit in a poker way of thinking when analyzing real life situations. We think the skills important to playing winning poker, and ideas behind these skills, have merit in other fields.
The goals of the course are to introduce the use of ideas from the poker world in skills of life, business, politics and international relations. We will specifically delve into the use of poker in:
1.Strategic thinking
2.Game Theory, Risk and Business
3.So
Seasonal Migrations: Signs of Spring
Through these interrelated investigations, students discover that sunlight drives all living systems and they learn about the dynamic ecosystem that surrounds and connects them. Guidelines, lessons, activities, reading connections, and interactive maps are included for each study.
Practice With Latitude and Longitude
In this lesson students find their own homes on Google maps and determine their precise latitude and longitude coordinates. They learn how to pinpoint the location visually and then move north, east, south, or west on the map by changing latitude and longitude values.
