SciNews: A resource for incorporating earth science current events into the classroom
Erin Dimaggio, an ASU grad student working in part with OT Co-I Ramon Arrowsmith, has just announced an education and outreach project - SciNews - that she is working on as part of her ASU/NASA Space Grant. SciNews provides "middle and high school teachers timely, pre-packaged lessons on a science current event (such as an oil spill, earthquake, or shuttle launch) that are short (~15 min), easy to implement, and align to state standards". Although not directly related to lidar, SciNews is a resource that is likely of interest to the many geoscience educators who come to OT looking for data. SciNews Issue 1 focuses on the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, and therefore is very complimentary to the OpenTopography hosted World Bank - ImageCat Inc. - RIT Haiti Earthquake LiDAR dataset (point cloud data, Google Earth image overlays). Congrats to Erin for putting together such a great resource for earth science education.
The full SciNews announcement, emailed to the Gilbert Club email list, is pasted below:
Hi all,
I just wanted to send this as a followup to the pop-up I gave at this year's Gilbert Club meeting.
I would like to introduce you to the education outreach project that I am working on as the focus of my ASU/NASA Space Grant. Although this outreach project (aimed at 7-12th graders) may not be directly useful to you, it is my hope that you might spread the word to educators that you know that might be interested. The project is called SciNews and all of the materials created are available for download via a website I created, hosted through the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University: http://sese.asu.edu/teacher-resources
The purpose of SciNews is to provide middle and high school teachers timely, pre-packaged lessons on a science current event (such as an oil spill, earthquake, or shuttle launch) that are short (~15 min), easy to implement, and align to state standards. Materials might include a slide show, videos, maps, photographs, or KML files for use in Google Earth. Each current event lesson has an associated PDF document that contains a brief overview of the event and lesson, as well as a map, photo(s), and AZ standards targeted (see attached). Although using current events in the classroom is not new, my goal here is to provide simple and short lessons that associate 'textbook' concepts with real events in the news while allowing for class discussion.
I have created a listserv to send out updates when new materials are posted and ready for download. I send out ~1 email every two-three weeks.
** To Sign Up for SciNews please send me an email at: emailSCINEWS@asu.edu **
Currently, over 100 educators are signed up to the listserv from 22 states and 6 countries...however, I would like to reach many more. Since SciNews is just underway (first listserv emails went out in Jan. 2011), I ask that you please spread the word to other science educators that might be interested!
Visit theSciNews website to download this Issue or check out the other 6 archived: http://sese.asu.edu/teacher-resources
Thank You!
Erin DiMaggio