Compelling Internet Based Projects
PLEASE NOTE: If you are a New Jersey K-12 Educator and are planning on
participating in any of the projects below please take a second to email
Josh Baron at jbaron@interport.net
so that we can assist you throughout the year.
The Internet is more than a library, a TV, or a pathway to passive information.
One of its most exciting uses is as a tool for collaboration. It allows
teachers and students to work together to design inquiries and explore
challenges. Online are opportunities to meet and work with scientists,
writers, engineers and other professionals. For students, this helps to
break down the artificial barriers between the school, the wider community
and the world of work. For teachers, it opens new paths to both professional
development and school reform and restructuring.
Interactions between students and working professionals can be tricky
to establish and maintain, however, and it may not be clear how to integrate
them into an existing curriculum. That's why the NASA K-12 Internet Initiative
has always made it a top priority to develop such programs and offer them
"out of the box and ready to go" to classrooms around the world.
Welcome to the WhaleNet website, which is dedicated to education while
focusing on whales and whale research. WhaleNet is a unique interdisciplinary,
hands-on, collaborative telecomputing project to foster excitement and
learning about the natural world in schools across the nation and around
the globe. Access to live satellite data on position of whales, curriculum
material and an ask-a-scientist page!
The Annenberg/CPB Math and Science Project presents Journey North in partnership
with Technology and Information Education Services (TIES), the National
Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Hamline University. Join students, teachers
and parents across North America in an Internet-based learning adventure
about the global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change.
Welcome to Blue Ice: Focus On Antarctica/Food Webs, the first of two exciting,
seven-week virtual field trips to Antarctica. Students, grades 4 - 12,
from around the world are working together in this online "class"
to learn just how an ecosystem as rich and vast as the Antarctic food web
can survive in the icy waters that surround such a cold and barren continent
as Antarctica. As we investigate the food web, we also learn about the
geography, weather, history, geology and wildlife of Antarctica, and begin
to consider our role as human beings in the stewardship of all the earth.
FEE IS REQUIRED.
VolcanoWorld brings modern and near real time volcano information to specific
target audiences and other users of the Internet. VolcanoWorld draws extensively
on remote sensing images (AVHRR, Landsat TM, Magellan, Gloria, etc.) and
other data collections. This is a MUST visit
site for anyone who teachers volcanoes!
The Kids as Global Scientists Program engages students in 'real-time',
inquiry-based weather curriculum. Come join students all around the world
and discover the wonders of weather!! SMALL FEE REQUIRED.
There are many good sites. That's the glory and the challenge of the Internet.
Our goal is to build a community that can be a center for teachers, students,
researchers, parents, educators, citizens at all levels who have an interest
in mathematics education. This is a MUST visit
site for mathematics teachers.
Track drifter buoys in the world's oceans, forecast today's space weather,
investigate tropical storms viewed from space. Project Athena engages students
in observing phenomena using remote-sensed data to construct knowledge
about the world. Data sets and instructional pieces are related to oceans,
the atmosphere, Earth resources, and space/astronomy. Real-time data is
used where possible. The material is intended for direct use by students
with appropriate assistance from teachers. The goal of Athena is to enhance
the K-12 science curriculum, and facilitate use of the powerful computational
tools in classrooms networked to the Web.
This project, based at the University of Washington in Seattle and sponsored
by NASA, is developing and will disseminate educational materials based
on realtime and retrospective Atmospheric Sciences and Space Sciences data
and information. These resources will be provided to K-12 educational systems,
museums and the public via the World Wide Web, with special emphasis being
placed on making the resources suitable for use in science and mathematics
instruction in the kindergarten through twelfth grade. Atmospheric Sciences
resources will be tailored to display and explore the unique meteorology
of the Pacific Northwest and the Puget Sound region with live data. Science,
engineering, and exploration themes from the Mars Pathfinder Mission are
being integrated in descriptive modules and LIVE data from the Mission
will be presented.
The University of Bradford has been working for a number of years on the
development of low cost robotic and remote telescopes. A fully robotic
telescope can decide when conditions are good enough and make observations
of the sky by itself: an astronomer does not need to be present and waste
time waiting for clear weather. Robotic telescopes are also useful in education
where students can send observations to the telescope from their classroom
and pick up the results the next day.
The Hands-On Universe is an education program sponsored by the National
Science Foundation and the Department of Energy that helps high school
students perform genuine astronomical research in their classrooms. Students
from around the world can request observations from an automated 30" telescope,
select and download images from an archive of over 1500 images, and learn
the math and science involved in professional astronomy through Hands-On
Universe curriculum. NOTE: Teacher training is required prior to access
to curriculum material.
The JASON Project was founded in 1989 by Dr. Robert D. Ballard following
his discovery of the wreck of the RMS Titanic. After receiving thousands
of letters from children who were excited by his discovery, Dr. Ballard
and a team of associates dedicated themselves to developing ways that would
enable teachers and students all over the world to take part in global
explorations using advanced interactive telecommunications.
Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) is
a worldwide network of students, teachers, and scientists working together
to study and understand the global environment.
The Learning Through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) Project is thousands
of students, over a hundred teachers, and dozens of researchers and scientists
working to improve science education in middle and high schools. They do
this by approaching the learning of science more like the doing of science,
and by employing a broad range of communication and collaboration technologies.
Objectives
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Innovative K-12 classroom learning applications utilizing on-line remote
sensing databases
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Areas of focus:
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Land-sea interface
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Oceanography
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Antarctica
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Effects of human activity on the environment
Take a virtual expedition to the Rift Valley in Africa. The live expedition
runs from October 5 to November 13, 1998. Other expeditions offered at
other times during the year include Galapagos Quest, Asia Quest, and Maya
Quest. FEE IS REQUIRED.
Projects of Interest: Additional Material
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EXPLORING THE ENVIRONMENT
This site have several modules on Earth Science and Biology topics which
fit very nicely with some of the project above.