VIVID EXAMPLES FOR ONLINE GEOSCIENCE CLASSES: GOOGLE EARTH GEOED VIDEO LIBRARY (GEGVL)

Earth science topics are typically complex in terms of location, timing, and how these are best explained, and are often related to a specific location or region that is intrinsically interesting. Giving specific examples of geoscience processes and products is important for student understanding of the Earth system, and linking these with specific places is especially effective. Beginning students in particular benefit from learning about geology near where they live. Field trips are the traditional mode of place-based geoscience education but these have been curtailed by the pandemic. Interactive tools that are engaging and promote active learning can supplement field trips. Geoscience Educational (GeoEd) videos can be useful for Geoscience place-based education, but pertinent ones can be hard find. To remedy this, we combined good place-based GeoEd videos with Google Earth. We built a place-based, geoscientist-reviewed GeoEd video library based on Google Earth and named it ‘Google Earth GeoEd Video Library’ or GEGVL. GEGVL is designed to help students and teachers explore the Earth in the classroom or individually. The GEGVL contains an index of high-quality, place-based geoscience videos that are geospatially organized in Google Earth as a first-level visual index. The global map emphasizes where the content of these GeoEd videos focuses, allowing students and teachers to “roam” the Earth to increase their knowledge about key Earth processes and events. Our approach links student knowledge of key processes with places they know or that interest them and uses an interactive “point and click” platform to open a video. As a video library, GEGVL provides a way for geoscience instructors to quickly find high-quality GeoEd videos. Based on the teaching objectives and needs, geoscience instructors can easily revise the GEGVL file into Google Earth KMZ files or Google Map webpages for each class as well as flipped classrooms. We are populating GEGVL continuously and would appreciate suggestions of place-based GeoEd videos to include. The link for the present GeoEd Video Library (KMZ file) is https://utdgss2016.wixsite.com/utdgss/gegvl

We invite contributions to GEGVL from all geoscientists and look for partners to help assess GEGVL in the classroom; please contact the first author for more information.