Teaching with New Tools: On-Line Data, Visualizations, Models

Geoscience today is a space-age science that makes extensive use of remote sensing data, remotely collected data, high performance computing, and state of the art visualizations. These new research tools can often be accessed on-line making them particularly suitable for use in undergraduate teaching. In February 2008, an On the Cutting Edge workshop brought together geoscientists and educators to consider how we currently take advantage of these new tools in undergraduate education, to look at newly emerging opportunities, and to consider what educational science has to say about teaching with these tools.

The products of the workshop are featured on the workshop website. This collection of resources for faculty includes a guide to tools that can be used in undergraduate geoscience courses, such as Google Earth, Digital Dynamic Maps, and GeoMapApp. The workshop resulted in new additions to the collection of over 60 undergraduate teaching activities that feature data, models or simulations. Presentations from the workshop are available, showcasing new technologies and sharing valuable insights on designing activities, working in collaborative groups, and teaching with visualizations. Ideas for new teaching materials that were inspired by each presentation were also developed. All of these resources are available at http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/data_models, and augment the existing collections on Teaching with Visualizations and Teaching with Data, which are available on the Cutting Edge website.