GEOMAPAPP LEARNING ACTIVITIES- TEACHING GEOSCIENCE CONCEPTS WITH A CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH-QUALITY TOOL

As STEM learning requirements enter the mainstream, geoscience students' exposure to authentic data visualized through a cutting-edge, research-quality, map-based interface becomes practially essential. Funded with an NSF GeoEd award, GeoMapApp Learning Activities (http://serc.carleton.edu/geomapapp/collection.html) are being created to provide teachers at the high school and undergraduate level with easy to access/easy to use "off the shelf" lessons that leverage GeoMapApp's extensive map-based database to help students visualize and explore real data that illustrates basic geoscience concepts and ideas.

GeoMapApp Learning Activities offer step-by-step instructions in a guided inquiry approach that enable students to dictate the pace of learning. Based on GeoMapApp (an easy-to-use map-based data exploration and visualisation tool at http://www.geomapapp.org), each activity is an efficient package of downloadable documents that includes step-by-step student instructions and answer sheets, an educator’s annotated worksheet containing teaching tips, additional content and suggestions for further work, and quizzes for use before and after the activity to assess learning.

Examples of activities so far created involve calculation and analysis of the rate of seafloor spreading, compilation of present-day evidence for huge ancient landslides on the seafloor around the Hawaiian islands, a study of radiometrically-dated volcanic rocks to help understand the concept of hotspots, and the optimization of contours as a means to aid visualisation of 3-D data sets on a flat computer screen.

These lessons are designed for students at the introductory undergraduate, community college and high school levels, and are provided in both .pdf and .doc format, allowing easy editing to suit teachers' needs, and are available through the SERC-Carleton web site at http://serc.carleton.edu/geomapapp/collection.html