TEACHING ABOUT HAZARDS USING CURRENT EVENTS

Major hazard events and natural disasters in the news provide a well-known “window of opportunity” for educating students and the general public about parts of the Earth system. In order to take advantage of these teachable moments, educators at all levels need access to high-quality teaching resources.

Following on the success of creating visualization collections about the 2004 Tusnami and the record-breaking 2005 Hurricane season, On the Cutting Edge has introduced new pages about more recent hazards events. These pages go beyond providing links to visuals of the phenomena and direct users to teaching activities, news reports, and general information about the type of hazard. Examples include: January 2010 Haiti Earthquake (http://serc.carleton.edu/39183), February 2010 Chile Earthquake (http://serc.carleton.edu/41312), and Oil Spills (http://serc.carleton.edu/45328). Each of the pages bring together resources created by researchers, government agencies and respected media sources and organize them for easy use by educators. Links are selected to showcase a variety of different types of visualizations, multiple reputable media outlets, and a selection of teaching activities related to the subject of the collection. Geoscience educators and researchers are encouraged to recommend links and supporting materials and to comment on the available resources. In this way the collection becomes more complete and its quality is enhanced.