StarChild: A Learning Center for Young Astronomers
The information and activities found in StarChild can be used to engage, excite, and educate students in your classrooms. Helps elementary school students learn about the sun and moon, planets, the asteroid belt, meteoroids and comets, astronauts and space suits, space travel and space probes, the Hubble space telescope, the Columbia accident, galaxies, the Milky Way, stars, quasars, black holes, cosmology, and dark matter.
Earth's Magnetic Field
The POETRY website explores solar storms and how they affect us, space weather, and the Northern Lights. A 64-page workbook of hands-on activities examines Earth's magnetosphere. Create a classroom magnetometer. Solve the space science problem of the week.
Astronomy Picture of the Day: Earth At Night
NASA Astronomy Photo of the Day website hosted this photo of Earth at night in November 2000. The photo shows what Earth looks like at night with urban centers highlighted by concentrations of city lights. The image is a composite of hundreds of satellite photographs taken by orbiting Defense Meteorological Satellites Program satellites.
Symmetries and Their Properties-Part 2: Reflections
This is the second i-Math in a four-part series of i-Maths entitled Symmetries and Their Properties. In this second i-Math you will investigate reflection, mirror, or bilateral symmetry. Mirrors can be used to create reflection symmetry. Many objects in nature, such as butterflies, the human body, and many types of leaves have bilateral symmetry. Objects we use every day, such as spoons, chairs, and cars also have bilateral symmetry. In this i-Math, you will learn about the mathematical properti
Paleoclimate: Climate Change Through Time
This site provides access to a spectrum of web-based visual resources and supporting material that can be used to teach students about paleoclimate through geologic time. Visualizations include simple animations, GIS-based animated maps and paleogeographic maps, as well as numerous illustrations and photos. Resources can be integrated into lectures, labs, classes, or other activities about paleoclimate and land cover and land use change over time.
Observe an animation showing the formation of an unconformity.
This website hosts an animation depicting the formation of an unconformity in the rock record. Users can play, rewind, fast forward and stop the animation at any point in the formation as well as read detailed text outlining the process. The animation is part of the Earth Exploration Visualization collection.
Plate Tectonic Movement Visualizations
This collection provides a wide array of visual resources and supporting material about plate tectonic movements. Visualizations include simple animations, GIS-based animated maps, paleogeographic maps and globes, and numerous illustrations and photos. This collection is not exhaustive but does represent some of the best sources for teaching. Resources can be incorporated into lectures, labs, or other activities.
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
Crystal Growth Movies
This site, maintained by the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wyoming, contains four QuickTime videos of actual crystal growth. To access the videos, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on any of the downloads that are available. These videos enhance understanding of the processes involved in crystallization.
Igneous Rocks for Undergraduate Courses
This site contains photographs of 22 igneous rock hand samples. Clicking on an image brings up a larger view of the sample. In addition, links to thin sections are available for some of the samples. Thin sections can be seen in both crossed polarized light and plane polarized light by moving the cursor on and off the photomicrograph. This resource is part of the Teaching Petrology collection. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/petrology03/index.html
Tonto National Monument: Saving a National Treasure
tells the story of the Salado people, who thrived in the Arizona valley where Tonto Creek joins the Salt River (1050-1450 AD). The Salado culture combined customs of several American Indian groups. They channeled the river to create farmland in the desert. They built Pueblo-style buildings. They left no written records. This monument, established in December 1907, was among the first sites protected under the Antiquities Act of 1906.
Roadside Attractions
A lesson in which students examine five examples of roadside architecture built in the 1920s and 30s to catch the eye of passing motorists. They include the Teapot Dome Service Station, the Big Duck poultry store, and the Benewah Milk Bottle.
Glorieta and Raton Passes: Gateways to the Southwest
examines the role of these two passes in ensuring that the Southwest would become and remain part of the U.S. Learn about traders and armies that depended on the passes, which were part of the Santa Fe Trail, as the best way to get through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The Santa Fe Trail was a key trade route until the railroad reached Santa Fe in 1880. Like the trail, the railroad and later highways ran through the two passes.
You Decide: Should we all be vegetarians?
This educational guide focuses on both sides of the vegetarianism debate. Students are invited to examine the nutritional, environmental, health and lifestyle issues, 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 guide students will determine where they stand on this controversial issue.
You Decide: Should fast food companies be held legally liable for the impact of their products on co
This educational guide focuses on whether or not fast food companies can be held legally liable for the impact of their products on consumers' health. 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 guide students will determine where they stand on this controversial issue.
Show Me a Picture and I'll Tell You a Story: Web Photo Journals
Students analyze and evaluate "photo journal" web sites, then create their own Web-based photo journal.
Flying Solo With My Digital Camera
Students will view a film clip about immigration and arrange interviews with immigrants they know. Using digital cameras they will create a classroom book that tells about the immigrant experience.
Creating an Ethnic Student Newspaper
In this lesson students analyze news articles and features covered by ethnic newspapers in both the past and present. They will also have the opportunity to create a school newspaper.
Urban Renewal
Urban renewal policies enacted in San Francisco's Fillmore district in the 1950s-60s provide a vivid case study in public policy, federal and local government, and citizen activism. This important history sheds light on present-day urban renewal policies, such as empowerment zones and welfare-to-work.
Today in History
This sit efeatures a different person or event in history each day. Past features include Frederick Douglass, Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Banneker, Rosa Parks, Samuel Slater, Louisa May Alcott, Radio City Arts Hall, the Wright brothers' first flight, the Bill of Rights, the Gadsden Purchase, the Federal Reserve System, the Wounded Knee massacre, Pearl Harbor, the first controlled nuclear fission chain reaction, and more.
