One Sky, Many Voices
http://onesky.engin.umich.edu/
The mission of the One Sky, Many Voices Project is to create innovative, inquiry-based
K-12 weather curricula that utilize current technologies such as CD-ROMs and
the World Wide Web for the interactive study of current weather and air quality.
Students, teachers, parents, and scientists can participate from classrooms,
homes, or other educational settings. Four-week and eight-week programs centered
around environmental science themes are featured at this Web site. Programs
run during set time periods so that individuals worldwide can coordinate their
learning with many other participants.
Estuary-Net
Project
http://www.northinlet.sc.edu/estnetweb/estnet.html
Estuary-Net is an excellent Web site for teachers to use guided inquiry learning
activities in their classroom. Estuary-Net was developed by the National Estuarine
Research Reserve System in response to water quality issues arising in coastal
areas. This project strives to develop collaborations among high schools, community
volunteer water quality monitoring groups, local officials, state Coastal Zone
Management (CZM) programs, and National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERRS)
to solve non-point source pollution problems in estuaries and their watersheds.
This Web site provides comprehensive information about characteristics of estuaries,
estuarine ecology, water quality monitoring; and quality assurance, quality
control, and standard operating procedures of a water quality monitoring program.
This Web site provides many classroom activities from the Estuary-Net curriculum.
The classroom activities are divided into three levels in order to provide various
degrees of involvement in the subject, ranging from lab experiments to single
field experiences to long-term monitoring. The benefit of this scaffolding is
that schools which do not have easy access to watershed areas can still participate
in the Estuary-Net activities by engaging in hands-on/minds-on laboratory activities.
All Estuary-Net activities contain objectives, assessments, time needed, materials,
procedures, and hypotheses.
WhaleNet
http://whale.wheelock.edu
WhaleNet is a collaborative project of the biology departments at Wheelock
College and Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. It is an educational site
devoted to whales, whale research, the marine habitat and environmental studies.
Students are encouraged to use telecommunications tools to ask researchers questions
online in the "Ask a scientist" area. The Satellite Tagging Observation Program
(STOP) electronically tracks whales to study their movements and migrations.
STOP includes data, observations, and satellite tracking maps. Teachers are
able to download a variety of tracking maps for use in their classrooms. Curricular
lesson plans are included to guide the study of the range of whale movement
during their migrations. WhaleNet also contains an area of curricular activities
which provide ideas on how to use the WhaleNet data and information for a variety
of topics including navigation, water testing, plankton tow and analysis, data
collection, photo identification of whales, bathymetry, topographic models of
the ocean bottom marine pollution and data analysis.
NASA's Quest Project
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/
This project, which is also called Sharing NASA, allows students to share
in the excitement of NASA's authentic scientific and engineering pursuits such
as flying the shuttle and International Space Station, exploring distant planets
with amazing spacecraft, and aeronautics/airplane research. In these projects,
students engage in scientific content and process with NASA scientists. Discourse
is facilitated with online chats, e-mail Q&A, and live audio/video programs.
The Albatross Project
http://www.wfu.edu/albatross/
This project uses sensitive satellites in space, miniature transmitters
on birds, and rapid e-mail communications to investigate the travels of albatross
on the open ocean.
Roadkill
Project
http://earth.simmons.edu/roadkill/roadkill.html
The Roadkill Project is designed to involve students and teachers with
scientific monitoring and telecommunications and to increase participant awareness
of the motor vehicle hazards for wildlife. This site is guaranteed to bring
about stimulating discussion in your classroom.
Classroom FeederWatch
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/cfw/
The Classroom BirdWatch program enhances student observation skills, supports
core science content, supports process skills objectives, promotes creativity,
and lends itself to student inquiry opportunities. Students collect bird data
and can access an interactive bird research database. Students publish their
findings, ideas and, artwork in a national newsletter called Classroom Birdscope.
The JASON Project
http://www.jasonproject.org/
The JASON Project uses telecommunications technologies called telepresence
to transport millions of students to the expedition research sites live via
satellite. Telepresence allows students at Primary Interactive Network Sites
(PINS) throughout the United States, Bermuda, the United Kingdom, and Mexico
to watch the expedition live, interact with scientists, and control live-feed
video cameras. Video, audio, and data signals originate from the simultaneous
live broadcasts. The broadcasts are then downlinked to the primary sites, all
in less than half a second. A multi-disciplinary curriculum is distributed to
all JASON Project-participating teachers early in the school year to ensure
that students are well-versed in the scientific principles they'll encounter
during the live broadcasts. As part of the curriculum, students are encouraged
to perform a variety of local field investigations using the same scientific
methods employed by scientists at the expedition sites.
The GLOBE Program
http://www.globe.gov/
The GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment)
Program is a world-wide network of students, teachers, and scientists engaged
in a tele-collaboration project to do meaningful real life science. In the GLOBE
Program, students make environmental observations and report their data findings
on the Internet. Scientists use the students' data to formulate atmospheric
models and provide feedback to the students. The measurements conducted by the
students include air temperature, cloud observations, precipitation, surface
water temperature and pH, soil moisture, biometrics, land cover assessment,
and species identification. Students also share findings and communicate with
other students using e-mail from the web site. GLOBE includes excellent descriptions
of equipment and procedures for data acquisition and a user-friendly searchable
data archive. The unique aspect of the GLOBE Program is that students are interactive
partners with scientists.
SC Butterfly Project
http://butterfly.clemson.edu/
This project tracks butterflies with student-gathered data in South Carolina.