A VOYAGE OF INTRIGUE AND DISCOVERY

An intensive short course for the professional development of teachers of Geology, Meteorology, and Oceanography

COURSE OVERVIEW

The learning experiences presented in this workshop are intended first and foremost to intrigue you. They also provide opportunities to use and understand the tools geologists and other scientists use to interpret the natural world and test their hypotheses. It's a great detective story with clues scattered all over the earth, many of which are still waiting to be discovered and understood. As you will see, the secrets of the earth are old and our species is still very young.

Outline of From Texas to Antarctica vista topics.  Click on the numbered boxes to move to corresponding pages in this website.

A central theme in this workshop is developing a better understanding of the process of science. Very rarely is any evidence totally unambiguous. Rather, as we weave together evidence from many sources, patterns emerge. In time, these patterns become more clear and eventually so well established that we tend to treat them as fact. A new piece of evidence, or a new understanding of existing data, can change our perception of the pattern, thus making ideas that were once almost considered fact suddenly appear to be wrong, or at least shortsighted. This is good news for teaching science, since solving detective stories is much more interesting than memorizing facts.

There are two key concepts that you and your students will need to understand to become researchers weaving the pattern instead of mere observers of facts. The first concept is that of geologic or deep time. This is so different from our ordinary perception of time that it is difficult to grasp without considerable reflection. The exercises in this workshop will get you started. The second concept is the notion of indirect evidence. Finding a fossil skeleton is a kind of direct evidence that will make sense to your students. How the squiggles on a seismogram tell us about the inside of the earth, or what the isotopes measured in a coral reveal about temperature, are far less obvious and far less certain. But it invites inquiry, serious thinking and creativity, exactly what we want our science students to be doing.

The scientific principles outlined in the introduction to the GMO TEKS, and the knowledge and skills embodied within the TEKS themselves, will be delivered through learning experiences organized within eight contemporary Earth science themes. This theme-oriented approach is intended to realistically convey the way in which geoscientists study the dynamically changing nature and history of our planet, and investigate some of humankind's most pressing environmental and resource problems. In addition, this approach illustrates the interdisciplinary nature of geoscience, showing how an integrated knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics is required to develop conceptual models to explain the natural world. Some of the vista learning experiences will provide examples of how Earth science concepts have changed and highlight questions that remain unanswered in order to demonstrate that science is built on a vast body of ever changing and increasing knowledge. Because we are following a theme-oriented approach, there will be considerable overlap in the delivery of the TEKS scientific concepts, as shown in Table 1. Information about the variety of topics (characteristics and conditions of the Earth, formation and history of the Earth, plate tectonics, origin and composition of minerals and rocks, the rock cycle, products of weathering, natural energy resources, characteristics of oceans, and the role of energy in water and climate) included in the introduction to the GMO TEKS will be covered, however, but within the context of the themes. The themes that we have selected emphasize that Earth as a system characterized by the complex interaction of processes, and biogeochemical and energy cycles.

The learning experiences corresponding to each vista will fall generally into these five categories:

1. Delivery of earth science concepts fundamental to the development of the theme.
2. Demonstrations of technology used to acquire and/or analyze scientific data relevant to each theme.
3. Computer-based laboratory investigations and other learning activities that use scientific methods (hypothesis testing) in problem-solving.
4. Ideas for open-ended research projects that use free software and data available via the Internet, or data and software provided by UTIG.
5. Activities that require students to build on the knowledge gained in the previous theme-related learning experiences to formulate opinions, or make informed decisions, using critical thinking.

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