What is Inquiry?
Good science education requires both learning scientific concepts and developing scientific thinking skills. Inquiry is an approach to learning that involves a process of exploring the natural or material world, and that leads to asking questions, making discoveries, and testing those discoveries in the search for new understanding. Inquiry, as it relates to science education, should mirror as closely as possible the enterprise of doing real science.
As today's tech-savvy teens become increasingly involved with technology and the Internet for learning, work, civic engagement, and entertainment, it is vital to ensure that they understand their legal rights and responsibilities under copyright law and also how the law affects creativity and innovation. This curriculum is designed to give teachers a comprehensive set of tools to educate students about copyright while incorporating activities that exercise a variety of learning skills. Lesson t
This is a project to develop a document for teaching graduate econometrics that is "open source", specifically, licensed as GNU GPL. That is, anyone can access the document in editable form, and can modify it, as long as they make their modifications available. This allows for personalization, as well as a simple way to make contributions and error corrections. The hope is that people preparing to teach econometrics for the first time might find it useful, and eventually be motivated to contribu
Earth Exploration Toolbook Chapter: Looking into Earth with GIS
Step-by-step instructions walk users through working with data from a seismic wave model in a freely available GIS (geographic information system) program, ESRI's ArcVoyager SE. Users generate and examine maps and produce graphs to explore variations in seismic wave velocities at depths of 28 and 100 km below Earth's surface. By examining and analyzing GIS-ready data, users visualize density changes and earthquake distributions near a spreading center and two subduction zones. Finally, users wil
Earth Exploration Toolbook Chapter: Creating Custom Map Images of Earth and Other Worlds
This chapter familiarizes users with Jules Verne Voyager, a freely available online map tool that includes data for Earth as well as 19 other planets and moons. Users create a variety of map images then save and import the images into a presentation or a word-processing document. In the activity, users explore the range of data that are available to create map images: 100 different types of data are available to characterize portions of Earth. In addition, Voyager has at least one type of data f
Earth Exploration Toolbook Chapter: Analyzing the Antarctic Ozone Hole
Users download and analyze satellite images showing the amount of ozone in the stratosphere. They interpret the images to identify the ozone "hole" that develops over Antarctica each summer, and compare its size from year to year. Using freely available image analysis software, ImageJ, users quantify the area of the Antarctic ozone hole each October from 1996 to 2004. Finally, they bring their measurements into a spreadsheet program and create a graph to document changes in the size of the ozone
Earth Exploration Toolbook Chapter: Analyzing Populations with Maps Using the U.S. - Mexico Demograp
In this activity, users are guided through a series of simple steps as they learn how to use a very powerful tool, the US-Mexico Demographic Data Viewer. Users find regions on a map, states within each region, and counties within each state. They describe and compare the geographical and socioeconomic characteristics of selected regions within the United States and Mexico. They analyze the data for variables that describe population characteristics to produce color-coded maps that demonstrate th
Linkage Mapping a Mutation in Arabidopsis
Since Alfred Sturtevant constructed the first genetic map of a Drosophilachromosome in 1913, new mutations have been mapped using his method of linkage analysis. Determining the map position of a new mutation -- and its corresponding gene -- consists of testing for linkage with a number of previously mapped genes or DNA markers. Linkage is the principle that the closer two genes or markers are located to one another on a chromosome, the greater the chance that they will be inherited together as
TOXMAP is a Geographic Information System (GIS) from the National Library of Medicine that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory. TOXMAP maps show where reported chemicals are released on-site into the air, water, and ground. The maps also identify the releasing facilities, single year releases, and chemical release trends over time.
Community Organizing Toolkit Game
The Toolkit is a set of resources that supports face-to-face training for residents and community leaders. The computer-based component (the "Organizing Game") is used to introduce concepts, prompt discussion, and allow residents to practice skills in a safe, non-threatening environment. The initial focus of the Toolkit is teaching Doorknocking, an organizing technique that's particularly effective in moving issues within a local community.
Training Educators to Design and Develop ODL Materials
Welcome to this facilitator’s guide. It contains exciting materials for conducting a workshop to train educators to develop Open and Distance Learning (ODL) resources. As you navigate through this document you will find materials needed for planning and conducting sessions for training educators in the development of ODL learning resources. These materials have been designed so that they can be used for professional development as well as for personal knowledge. This facilitator’s guide is
From Silk to Oil: Cross-Cultural Connections Along the Silk Roads
This is a curriculum guide for exploring China's inner Asian frontier and one of the world's oldest and most important trade routes. The 350-page guide features five independent sections. Each examines the geography, ethnic relations and political history, exchange of goods and ideas, religions, or art along the Silk Roads (beginning in the second century BCE). Each includes lesson plans, documents, maps, and board game.
World History Survey Course on the Web
World History teachers face many challenges to incorporating primary sources in their teaching—the pressures of coverage in survey courses, the lack of available materials, and inadequate training in dealing with unfamiliar sources from a range of cultures. World History Sources responds to these challenges (as well as the new opportunities offered by the Internet) by creating a website to help world history teachers and students locate, analyze, and learn from online primary sources and to fu
Women in World History
Women in World History is an online curriculum resource center designed to help high school and college world history teachers and students find and analyze online primary sources on women in world history. Materials encourage teachers to integrate recent scholarship and give students a more sophisticated framework for understanding global women’s history. Women in World History reflects three approaches central to current scholarship in world history and the history of women: an emphasis on
Making the History of 1989: The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe
Making the History of 1989 materials were developed because teachers and their students have little access to vivid historical documents in English that convey the epochal events of 1989. Project materials utilize recent advances in our understanding of how historical learning takes place, including complex interaction with sources, recursive reading, and skills used by historians. The site has three key features: a substantial collection of high quality primary sources; a set of multimedia int
A Look Back at Braddock
A Look Back at Braddock District is a local history, the story of a rural region in the heart of Fairfax County, Virginia, transformed over time into a sprawling suburb of Washington, DC. The memories of more than 50 Northern Virginia residents are captured in oral histories. Photographs, documents, maps and artifacts amplify these personal experiences and document growth and change in the area. The site offers lesson plans and activity ideas as well as other resources in a database. Explore ta
This site invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into the book and film A Midwife’s Tale, both based upon the remarkable diary of 18th-century midwife/healer Martha Ballard. Although DoHistory is centered on the life of Martha Ballard, you can learn basic skills and techniques for interpreting fragments that survive from any period in history.
Performance through character development
Students will use the creative elements of character analysis and improvisation to develop a character for performance. While this unit's theme is the development of characters for performance, its overarching goal is to provide French immersion students with the opportunity to extend their discourse and further develop their speaking skills. This unit does not cover articulation or pronunciation exercises. For this reason these elements of performance are not being evaluated in the unit assessm
This course introduces students to the basic concepts, logic, and issues involved in statistical reasoning. Major topics include exploratory data analysis, an introduction to research methods, probability, and statistical inference. The objectives of this course are to give students confidence in manipulating and drawing conclusions from data and provide them with a critical framework for evaluating study designs and results. An important feature of the course is the use of an intelligent tutori
Public Lands: America's Largest Classroom
Are you looking for new ways to increase your students' interest and achievement in science, mathematics, and reading? Is student motivation suffering in your classroom? Why not consider taking your teaching outside? Studies have shown that using the environment as a learning tool not only increases student achievement but also helps students develop lifelong learning skills and a greater sense of respect and responsibility. If this approach sounds intriguing, consider the Hands on the Land prog