Try these websites for more information and for useful teaching ideas.There is a problem with the web in that, unlike with textbooks where the material is usually checked for its accuracy, any material can be put on the web even if it is totally incorrect! The best idea is to rely on websites belonging to institutions such as universities and geological societies, or government survey organisations. STOP PRESS!!!You can now access the excellent Geological Society of Australia Education and Outreach Resources website as follows: http://gsa.org.au/resources/education.html Fact-ites are designed to provide quick information and activities for busy teachers. Quizzicles are online interactive geoscience puzzles and quizzes for middle school students. There are obviously many useful sites which can be found by Google searches, such as Volcanoworld and This Dynamic Earth (from the US Geological Survey) This one is a fabulous all-purpose geology interactive site, where you can click on icons to get more detail about fossils, structures and so on: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html Another all-purpose site is: http://www.geology.com which has many useful things such as downloadable mineral identification charts, a geology dictionary and so on. For fossils and other palaeontological information, including teachers' resources, see: www.paleoportal.org ****ANYONE! not just teachers: if you want to learn more about any aspect of Earth Science, the Geoscience Course Resources site lists hundreds of Earth Science courses freely available on the internet, under different headings. Many are Uni introductory courses and are excellent. http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anoncoursessub.html http://comets.amsmeteors.org/ has great information on comets and meteors including video clips. http://www.visions-of-science.co.uk/winners2003/win-31.htm is a very unusual view of Earth’s water and atmosphere. Visit The Energy Chest at www.energychest.net Hosted by Joules the robot, The Energy Chest offers an entertaining and interactive way for children between the ages of 8 and 14 to learn about energy efficiency. School buildings and their energy systems (heating, lighting, insulation, hot water, etc) provide a readily accessible real-world setting for this. Also to do with energy, the following site has lots of resources (like fossil sets, teaching plans, posters etc.) for teachers and parents: www.spe.org Some of the Universities in the USA have brilliant sites, like this CalTech one on earthquakes etc: www.larkit.com.au an Australian commercial company, has interactive Australia-centred material for students to do separately or as a class, geography/geology curriculum. CDs include: Beaches, a set on beach management including case studies, and one on Hurricane Katrina. Details are on the website, which also has downloads of previews which demonstrate the features of the resources. The next few are very good and have free downloadable material: Teaching the Dynamic Earth, FREE downloadable workbooks!! The Dynamic Rock Cycle; Spot that Rock: Rock I.D. and interpretation for beginners; Earth Science out-of-doors; The Plate Tectonics interactive; Investigating the changing Earth and Atmosphere; Joint Earth Sciences Initiative (UK-based) Geological Society of London (UK) Teaching Resources Women in Mining Education Foundation (USA) The Mineral Information Institute, Colorado has attractive downloadable lesson material: go to www.mii.org Geoscience K-12 Resources has hundreds of links to teachers' resources sites, some Canadian bias http://web.cuug.ab.ca/~johnstos/geosci.html US Geological Survey Education page "The Learning Web" has lesson plans and activities http://pubs.usgs.gov/education If you need pictures of Earth Science stuff for teaching, try Google Image Search which can also turn up some useful sites: http://images.google.com ********EVERYONE should look at Google Earth**********: http://earth.google.com/index.html for wonderful aerial photos of everywhere on Earth: fly down the Grand Canyon or look at your own neighbourhood: you can print out areas for fieldwork in super detail: FREE! The following are Australian institutions which have geological information, education pages and good links pages: Australian GeoScience Geological Society of Australia There is also the WA Division of the GSA site The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of WA site http://www.cmewa.com The Australian Heritage people have IMMENSE amounts of useful downloads and FREE publications especially on environmental topics. Go to http://www.deh.gov.au/about/publications/list.html The Geological Survey of WA (Department of Industry and Resources) http://www.doir.wa.gov.au/GSWA/publications is good for straight information like maps and so on. ***Get FREE downloads of Field Guides, the Mining Atlas for WA, and Reports covering many parts of the State: find them on the website or purchase a disk with all the pdfs of these from their information counter.*** You can also purchase a cheap CD which has ALL the geology maps of WA and a searchable database on them: print out what you like. Earthquakes! find out all about seismicity and earthquakes, and tsunamis, including activity in Western Australia (see the traces of recent events), at the UWA site: www.seismicity.segs.uwa.edu.au The ABC video/broadcast series: "Our Earth" is a 7-episode geology course designed for Australian lower secondary students, but it could be used outside this age group. It has been broadcast a few times recently, and is also available on video. Good downloadable worksheets etc. were at: www.abc.net.au/schoolstv or see me for copies of the sheets and video. DID YOU KNOW that we are in the middle of THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF PLANET EARTH??? It runs for 3 years. There are 12 nice brochures encapsulating the variety of Earth science topics which are worth a look: see downloads at: http://www.yearofplanetearth.org/downloads.htm THE PILBARA PROJECT - a new educational resource NASA and the Australian Centre for Astrobiology (part of Macquarie Uni) have jointly developed an educational package designed to enable students to undertake a scientific investigation of a specific topic, early life and possible comparisons between Mars and rocks in the Pilbara, entirely computer-based, but with virtual field tools to make it as near as possible to a real scientific investigation. The NASA worldwind facility is a terrific aid in Earth Science. Contact me for WA-specific applications. http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/download.html |