As I perused my bloglines this morning, as usual, I look at the earthquakes feed first (the USGS makes a variety of feeds available at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/catalogs/.
As usual, there are names of places I have never seen before. I never even heard of the Kuril Islands before I started monitoring this…
How could I use these data in a classroom? Icebreaker, perhaps?
1) link the RSS feed into your course web site
2) with the students input, select a location.
3) Take a look at the description on the USGS site…
4) Fly to it on Google Earth and talk through the geological setting…
particularly since you can also load up the plate-boundaries layer (available linked off the same page above).
5) Depending on your course – there are other layers available (cultural sites, parks, etc.) What are the implications of an earthquake in that area? What else can we learn about the region? (you could even do breakouts with the students at that point and see what each of them find out by searching for more information on the area).
This would work for all ages of students, pretty much, I think…
Yes, Google Earth does have a recent earthquakes layer… but I like the idea of pulling up a list on a “2-D page”, letting the class pick a location and then flying in from there…
Just an idea… has anyone tried something like this? Seems like it would be a fun way of pulling “current” data/events into the classroom…