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Lesson Plans Introduction
Declan De Paor, Jillian Daniels, Ishita Tyagi
Real-time Monitoring, Enhanced Visualization and Temporal Analysis of Tectonic and Geophysical Data NSF - EAR 0310232
Dept of Physics, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA correspondence:
[email protected]
Our Innovation
Geobrowsers such as Google Earth or NASA World Wind have been used to design many geoscience learning experiences (e.g. www.gelessons.com). Existing lesson plans fall into two categories:
We have added a level of scaffolded learning structure to our Google Earth lessons using Network Links. These Keyhole Markup Language (KML) tags are normally used to monitor real-time data such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
teacher-controlled and student-controlled.
We use Network Links to allow teachers to control the content that students view
A danger with teacher-controlled lessons is that students may be passive observers and lack engagement. However, with a tool such as Google Earth, there is also a danger with undirected studentcontrolled discovery-learning. Students are easily distracted by opportunities for mindless browsing.
Students work at computers in groups of two or three. The teacher can cause Google Earth to automatically return the globe to the location that students are supposed to be studying or (s)he can, for example, create a natural disaster alert and have students play the role of crisis managers (e.g. http://www.juicygeography.co.uk/montserrat.htm).
Lessons Five examples are presented for interactive demonstration, covering a range of student ages, groups and abilities; from elementary school through senior undergraduate. These cover several MA Curriculum Framework Learning Standards (2006) and equivalent policies in other states.
(i) "Where on Earth?" A Geo-version of “Where’s Waldo?” Students search for features on the virtual globe given images, data, or models. This lesson can be tailored to all age groups. Using a Network Link, the teacher uploads an image to a Screen Overlay that hovers in the top left corner of the Google Earth window while students search for the target location by moving around the geoglobe.
(iii) "Alert!" Students react to modeled real-time data feeds and decide whether to issue an natural hazard alert. The teacher decides when and where the solid model marking the event will appear.
(ii) "Wait, Don't Tell Me!" Students predict locations on the globe given Lat / Lon or UTM data. The teacher then uploads a placemark and student computers automatically “fly there.”
File Structure Students open a simple KML doc file called “Lesson1.kml”. The code of this file is as follows. Understanding how this KML code works is not essential. All that is required is to substitute the teacher’s URL for http://users.wpi.edu/~declan/doc.kml):
(iv) "To the Rescue!" Students estimate food, water, and housing needs resulting from an earthquake and plan rescue and relief operations.
(v) "Just Map It!" Whereas most GIS lessons use published or professionally produced maps, we encourage field geology students to overlay their own rough field maps on the geoglobe terrain in an iterative process of mapping and overlaying.
For detailed lesson plans see the email sign-up sheet on the table.
load this KML docon students' computers network link to teacher's file 1 http://users.wpi.edu/~declan/doc.kml onChange 4 onStop 7 Teachers create a KML doc with content such as this (Full documents are supplied with the lesson plans): Alert 1 -121.7176339182145 46.82552338859504 5029.19471665403 6261.7674660958 48.7726 340.14 Model -121.728257 46.856698 0 files/Alert.dae
