Great Lakes Protection Fund
National Science Foundation
The George Gund Foundation
Lake Erie Protection Fund
Ohio Sea Grant College Program
U.S. Department of Education
The Ohio State University
1) Background:
Itís time to prepare for those days when classroom are networked
into the Internet and students expect to use it to conduct portions of
their science investigations and communicate their findings. This internet
resource is designed to help technologize secondary level teachers of the
Great Lakes sciences, providing them with tools for enhancing their presentation
and their studentsí potential to access current information to supplement
existing print materials.
2) Objectives:
This project is aimed at providing classroom teachers of science and
social studies and Ohioís marine advisory service agents with computer-based
presentations to introduce the background of major Great Lakes topics and
engage student attention to questions about the Earth systems that are
worthy of classroom investigation.
1) The project uses Internet sessions to introduce chapters of the Great Lake Erie (Fortner and Mayer, eds., 1993) and relate the major topics to the other Great Lakes. The linked topics can be run from a CD-ROM for presentations in workshops, and the key presentation components can be downloaded as overhead transparencies for classroom use.
2) The separate lessons can be downloaded from the project webpages published in the website of Earth Systems Education.
The Great Lakes topics that we addressed through this project can be searched in four different ways including;
1) by using contents of the book, "The
Great Lake Erie":
The Great Lake Erie is comprised of 16 chapters, and each of them represents
a significant topic worthy of classroom attention. Almost all chapters
may be associated with more than one topic area.
2) by using topics of
ES-EAGLS:
This series of publications consists of 5 books and 68 activities which
were developed to take a concept or idea from the existing school curriculum
and develop it in a Great Lakes context appropriate for students in middle
and high school.
3) by using Concept Maps:
Concept mapping is one way of demonstrating concepts and the conceptsí
relationships to each other. For this project, concept maps were used to
provide visitors with visual clues of what can be found through a set of
webpages and enable visitors to reach easily what they want to see.
4) by Research Topics:
Survey research has been conducted to investigate teachersí
assessment on the relative priority of a variety of the Great Lakes topic
areas (Fortner and Mayer, in press; Fortner and Corney, in preparation).
The topic areas included in the survey also can be used as a guideline
for teachersí searches since the higher priority of a certain topic
implies frequent inclusion of the topic in their teaching plan.
5) by Sponsors:
Numerous organizations and agencies have advanced Earth Systems Education
through support of curriculum development, teacher education and research
about Great Lakes education. You may find project titles and products by
sponsor with this link.
4. Structure of the webpage for a lesson
1) Brief Description of the Topic:
This portion is used to provide visitors with an introduction and basic
information of the topic. Definition of key words, summary of important
statistics, and brief description of current status are also included.
Introductory
slide shows for a sample lesson are utilized as needed.
2) Challenging Questions:
Challenging questions provide visitors with not only strong motivation
for inquiry but also hints of what will be learned through lessons. Some
of the questions were adopted from the ES-EAGLS series described above.
3) Ohio Sea Grant Materials
on the Topic
Ohio Sea Grant has produced a variety of curriculum materials, education
publications, fact sheets, guides, and videos. When teachers need additional
information of the topic, they can refer to this section to request materials
or access the on-line newsletter, TwineLine .
4) Activities
Beside ES-EAGLS, there are many other publications and learning activities
which were developed based on the Earth Systems Education approach by the
principal investigator, including
ACES
(Activities for the Changing Earth System), LAKERS
(Lake-Aware Kids Engaged in Relevant Science), GLIMCES
(Great Lakes Instructional Materials for the Changing Earth System),
and Global
Change in the Great Lakes Scenarios. Activities related to the topic
are selected and introduced from other programs such as
Project
Learning Tree (PLT) and
Project
WET as well as those materials. Some sample activities were also transformed
into
PDF
files so that teachers can download to preview them through Internet.
5) Related Pictures, Figures, and Tables
To maximize the potential of Internet for enhancement in audio-visual
communication, key concepts and findings were presented with pictures,
figures, or tables. Some of them were provided as a thumbnail with a link
to the site that has original materials.
6) Related Topics
A comprehensive concept map was constructed for each of the Earthís
major subsystems including
water,
air, land,
life
and human beings, and every instruction page has a digest concept map of
the topic. These two kinds of concept maps are expected to help visitors
navigate in both horizontal and vertical directions through the sea of
scientific concepts.
7) Related Links
The quality of internet-based instructional materials is, in part,
determined by the quality of links included since information which is
credible and recent is necessary for making responsible decisions on scientific
and social issues. The ESE website has already accumulated a number of
reliable information sources and identified several information networks
regarding Great Lakes topics (for
ESE's
link page).