GeoMapApp Mini-lessons and the K-12 Classroom: Transformative Resources for the 21st Century Educator
- Lead PI: Dr. Andrew Goodwillie
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Unit Affiliation: Marine and Polar Geophysics, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)
- September 2010 - August 2013
- Inactive
- North America ; New York
- Project Type: Research Outreach
DESCRIPTION: This award is being used to create a suite of K-12, student-centered learning activities, called mini-lessons, that utilize resources available through GeoMapApp, an on-line, free data discovery and exploration tool that incorporates hundreds of built-in scientific data sets. These ready-to-use cyber-education learning modules cover a number of geoscience concepts and inquiry-based learning requirements contained in the New York state K-12 Earth science core curriculum. Hosted at SERC-Carleton and available to all, each mini-lesson includes goals and learning outcomes, guiding questions, downloadable handouts, links to standards, pre- and post- quizzes to assess the student-driven learning experience, and links for teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of mini-lessons and impact on learning. Under the auspices of teacher professional development, hands-on workshops are being used to entrain a cohort of practising teachers as early-adopter collaborators to use the GeoMapApp mini-lessons in their classrooms within and around New York City. Feedback and experiences of teachers will be used to improve the mini-lessons. The target audience for GeoMapApp mini-lessons is middle and high school Earth science teachers and their students, with additional applicability at the community college level. GeoMapApp is a cutting edge, transformative tool that lies at the intersection of open data access, exploration, discovery and visualization and is being increasingly tapped by a wide range of users in the broader Earth sciences community. It facilitates the incorporation of spatially-arranged data and map-based learning within educational practice. geoscience educational experience. The mini-lessons being developed through GeoEd funding provide context for the GeoMapApp platform that is helping to advance public Earth system science literacy.
OUTCOMES: Many mini-lessons developed and presented.