Geoscience Resources

The Virtual Geosciences Professor's Course Resources

Good Practices

%The Butler Does It%

    The fact that you are looking at this page suggests that you have an interest in how others are using the Internet/multimedia to enhance learning in the geosciences. Please take a few minutes to respond to a survey.

    I have been collecting URLs for about 5 years and continue to struggle with how to portray this information so that it is useful to the reader and relatively easy for me to maintain.

    I have decided to provide several options:

    1. If you are a "new user" and trying to get an idea as to how your peers are using the Internet to help create and sustain learning environments, stay on this page and look through what I consider to be good places to visit to get ideas - Good Practices. Then you may wish to extract information from the database in (2) that follows this list.

      The developer of each featured resource is encouraged to download and display the Virtual Professor's Seal of Approval on the upper right hand side of this page and provide a link back to this site.

      1. Analytical Resources
      2. Course Resources
      3. Data
      4. Departmental Commitment
      5. Field Trips
      6. Handouts
      7. Homework and Laboratory Exercises
      8. Image Collections
      9. Learning Resources
      10. On-Line Geoscience Courses
      11. Resource Materials
      12. Student Projects

      I am particularly interested in Interactive Uses of the Internet - resources that engage the user in the construction of his or her own knowledge base.

    2. As of March 21, 2001 there are approximately 4,750 geoscience course resources stored in a FileMakerPro database. If this is your first time to use this service please take a few minutes to read about the structure of this database.

      The resources have been arranged according to broad categories with each category subdivided into content-based subcategories. You may search by category, subcategory and/or by words. The entire database can be searched for key words.

      The purpose of this page is to focus on those resources which illustrate good practices and might be adopted by, or prove suggestive, to others. Clearly, there is an element of personal judgment in producing such lists and the author bears full responsibility for the contents. I am always interested in being aware of new resources and will gladly accept nominations.

      Each record includes the following information:

      1. The name of the producer of the resource
      2. The name of the resource
      3. The URL of the resource
      4. The URL of the producer
      5. The Category
      6. The Subcategory
      7. Good Practice Tag

      The following Categories are represented in the data structure:

      1. Analytical ~ 75 resources - primarly tools, software, jave applets, etc.
      2. Course Resources ~ 1,700 - Internet-based resources that accompany geoscience courses
      3. Data ~ 125 - geoscience data sets
      4. Department - departments that have made a meritorious committment to distribute Internet-based resources
      5. Field Trips ~ 300 - opportunities for independent travel and study
      6. Handouts ~ 450 - supplementary material you might distribute to your students
      7. Homework ~ 200 - Internet-based homework and laboratory exercises
      8. Images ~ 200 - geoscience image collections
      9. Learning ~ 25 - resources devoted to learning strategies
      10. OnLine ~ 10 - geoscience courses delivered Online
      11. Resources ~ 850 - materials that you may want to make available to your students
      12. Student Projects ~ 25 - collections of Internet-based student projects

      For example, you could select Student Projects and receive a list of ~ 25 resources. if you also were to select Good Practices you would receive a list of 9 of these which are judged as good places to begin your exploration of how others are using the Internet as Student Projects.

      Each category is further classified into one of the following content-based Subcategories:

      A judgment was made as to where the resource would fit into the following subject matter areas. Clearly, this is a personal opinion and the user is encouraged to not restrict their searches to a single subcategory.

      1. Computers and Geology ~ 70
      2. Earth System Science ~ 1010
      3. Earthquakes - freshman/sophomore level ~ 140
      4. Energy Resources ~ 50
      5. Environmental ~ 550
      6. Field Trips - General ~ 175
      7. Field Trips - Hard Rock and Structural ~ 70
      8. Field Trips - Sedimentary and Soft Rock ~ 75
      9. Geochemistry ~ 80
      10. Geochronology ~ 10
      11. Geologic Hazards ~ 100
      12. Geology and the Internet ~ 10
      13. Geophysics ~ 240
      14. Glacial ~ 70
      15. Historical Geology ~ 175
      16. Hydrogeology ~ 90
      17. Learning ~ 50
      18. Maps ~ 100
      19. Mineralogy ~ 275
      20. National Parks ~ 10
      21. Oceanogrpahy ~ 220
      22. Paleontology ~ 150
      23. Petrography ~ 175
      24. Physical ~ 450
      25. Remote Sensing ~ 60
      26. Space Geology ~ 100
      27. Structural Geology and Plate Tectonics ~ 275
      28. Surface Processes ~ 250
      29. Volcanoes ~ 80

      You have the opportunity to view all entries in each of the categories and subcategories. The pull-down menues are connected by the and logical operator. Selecting the category Field Trip will display all of the virtual field trips in the database. Selecting the category Field Trip and Good Practices will display all virtual field trips that are judged to illustrate good practices. Selecting the category Field Trip and Good Practices and the key word volcano will display all records that meet the three criteria.

      FileMakerPro database

    3. There are a number of general resources that focus on Computing and Learning and the Earth Sciences

      Project Sisyphus - An experiment to see if geoscience faculty are ready and willing to discuss learning via a listserv

      ANON - Another Node On the interNet
      [Resources for those interested in Geosciences, Mathematics and Computing]

      The No Significant Difference Phenomena
      [Papers to be presented at the November, 2000 Meeting of the Geological Society of America Annual Meetings, Reno, Nevada]

      Successes in Creating Multimedia-Assisted Learning Environments - The Sage on the Stage Versus the Guide on the Side -- Yet Another Divide to Cross
      [Papers presented at the October, 1999 Meeting of the Geological Society of America Annual Meetings, Denver, Colorado]

      Creating Learning Environments with the Internet and Multimedia
      [Papers presented at the October, 1998 Meeting of the Geological Society of America Annual Meetings, Toronto, Canada]

      Macintosh Computer Applications in Undergraduate Geoscience Courses
      [Short courses (1995 and 1996) held at San Francisco State University in conjunction with the AGU Fall Meetings]

      Science and Mathematics Internet Courses and Course Resources
      [Resources for Life Sciences, Chemistry, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Mathematics and Physics]

    It is imperative that we respect and protect the intellectual property of the individuals who designed and implemented the resources. I think it is proper to correspond with the individual if you want to use his/her resource for one of your exercises. Find out if they are prepared for what might be a fairly high demand on their server. It would be easy to strip out the text and accompanying images and put them on your server. This raises serious ethical issues. Perhaps the author would allow you to operate a "mirror" site. Most developers are proud of their efforts and it is always good form to ask. 

    

March 21, 2001
    
Return to the Virtual Geosciences Professor's Home Page

    
 Since July 13, 1999