Exploring the Environment
|
"Poets have written about the 'eternal hills' and on the scale of a human lifetime, the hills and mountains certainly appear unchanging. But on a different time scale, a much longer one, the Earth's surfaces go through changes just as we do…"
Exploring the Environment (ETE) consists of 17 Web-based learning modules that address real environmental dilemmas worldwide.
From their home or classroom computer, students are trained online to use "imaging" software to help them use NASA's view from space to observe biological, chemical, and geological changes over enormous portions of the Earth. Working in teams like real scientists, students are challenged to track a live hurricane, predict the global impact of a volcanic eruption, investigate the shrinking habitat of the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and examine issues and images of the Amazon rainforest.
ETE provides teachers tools for students to become environmentally aware and to acquire the values and attitudes necessary for sustainable development. Toward this end, the ETE modules encourage collaborative groups of students to conduct research in environmental areas and to generate products which demonstrate understanding. Resources are provided to address global issues through the use of satellite images and to create classrooms featuring active-learning approaches, assessment through exhibitions, teamwork, students taking responsibility for their own learning, and awareness of the dynamics of both physical/biological and socio-economic variables.
The ETE modules augment existing courses in biology, chemistry, geo, Earth, and environmental science. Interdisciplinary in nature, the modules can also be used in courses such as economics, social studies, and history.
ETE emphasizes problem-based learning (PBL) and collaborative learning groups for student-directed inquiry into Earth systems education. The modules encourage students to think, solve problems, and write and speak clearly. The emphasis in this model is for students to take responsibility--and a more active role in the learning process. And as in real-life situations, the goal is not in answering questions correctly, but in asking them. To learn more about using PBL and cooperative learning, there are useful tips in the Teacher Pages.
Curator: Randolph Kim
Responsible NASA Official: Mark
Leon
Last Updated: 07/02/2002
