Dr. William W. Locke - Earth Sciences on the Internet

Earth Sciences on the Internet - Geography 400(02)

Spring, 1997

Instructor: 	Dr. William Locke		Office:	Traphagen 223-224
Phone:		994-6918			E-mail:	ueswl@montana.edu 
Office Hours:	TTh 2-4, by appointment, and when my doors are open!
Classroom:	Varies, mostly Reid 303	
Text:		None required, but see Ritter, M. E., 1997, "Earth Online", Wadsworth, 
at http://ritter.wadsworth.com

	This course will examine the way the Earth Sciences are presently taught on 
the Internet, consider the way they SHOULD be taught, and close with student-written 
and -lead exercises using the Internet in both traditional and innovative ways.
	The first several weeks will involve searching the Web for accessible 
LABORATORY EXERCISES, using either the standard Netscape-available search engines or 
Metacrawler, which searches the searchers.  [Note:  Results of those searches 
will be posted here as hotlinks as they are reported to me.]  Class meetings will be 
devoted to examination of those exercises, particularly in terms of their pedagogy.  
Do they use the Internet to save on printing costs, particularly of color images, 
or do they use the unique multi-dimensional nature of the Web to link data collection, 
interpretation, and analysis?
	The next several weeks will involve searching the Web for accessible DATA 
SOURCES and ANALYTICAL TOOLS.  Classroom discussion will include problems of data 
quality, data quantity, and appropriate levels of manipulation for 1XX-level 
laboratory courses.  "Data", in this context, can mean both numerical data like
real-time weather, climate, and geophysical information as well as spatial 
"metadata" and even opinion.
	The final weeks will be spent designing, demonstrating, and defending draft 
versions of possible future Web-based laboratory exercises for our ESCI 111 and
112 courses.

Critiques of Sites/Exercises on the WWW.

Executive Summaries of:

• Discussion of Teaching Philosophies, Goals, and Practices
• NTU Presentation on "High-Tech Teaching on a Low-Tech Budget"

Relevent Hotlinks (updated 5/1/97)

Summaries of Geography/Geology Departments world-wide

Home Pages

Virtual Field Trips

Mineralogy

On-line Petrology

Soils

Terrestrial Planetology

Earth Science courseware

You need to get Adobe Acrobat Reader for these labs; still, they may be interesting.
University of Wyoming intro geology labs
University of Wyoming intro geology labs

Topography

Weather and Climate

Hydrology, Precipitation and Climate Data

Earthquake stuff

Imagery from Space

Mapping and the Web