GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION MATERIALS: AN INTEGRATED WEBSITE WITH TOPICAL PRESENTATIONS, SUMMARIES, AND REFERENCE SITES

There is no shortage of quality geoscience resource materials for all grade levels. The shortage is in the time available for our teachers to sort through all of these resources to develop concise, understandable summaries of geoscience topics. Time is also needed to develop and incorporate content that is pertinent to their local and state areas. And of course there is also the issue of some teachers having limited geoscience experience or of teachers having to teach outside of their content specialties. The goal of this work is to try to address some of these issues.

Two efforts are underway to provide content and curriculum materials to teachers, both of which will be housed on the Science and Math Education Center website/server at UNCWilmington. First, powerpoint presentations are being made that cover the basics of different geoscience topics as well as some locally important facts and issues. Topics covered include streams, groundwater, coastal processes, resources, and many others. More specifically, these topics might further include discussions of flooding, formation of cones of depression and sinkholes, hurricanes, black shale gas exploration, etc. that are important issues locally or statewide and that bring the discussion to the importance of science literacy to public policy. In addition to the prepared presentation slides, the second effort includes the preparation of written summaries, vocabulary, questions/answers, and reference materials. These materials may take the form of a lesson plan or provide the foundation for development of a lesson for the teachers. One method that has been employed to “house” and summarize these materials is GOOGLE Sites. The goal is to eventually have a complete set of information on all of the major geoscience topics but the initial plan is to post a new one monthly and provide teachers with the opportunity to ask questions online. Virtual field trips will accompany some of the topics. Topical examples and supporting materials will be shown.