Facilitate Wonder

The NSF-funded ReaL Earth System Inquiry Project is planning an interactive teacher-led workshop on the use and creation of virtual fieldwork.

This blog entry is intended to provide information to potential participants, individuals and organizations (BOCES and Teacher Centers, for example) that may be partners in the workshop. It is also a space for drafting and critiquing workshop proposals for the STANYS conference and other venues and to draft and critique flyers and other promotional ideas for these workshops.

Workshop Overview:

The workshop will begin by contrasting two different virtual fieldwork experiences (VFEs), created by the workshop leaders (Earth science teachers Sarah Miller of Norwich High School and Jud Spanneut of Perry Junior High in New Hartford). The two virtual fieldwork experiences are different both pedagogically and technologically. And they are both really cool. Following the overview of these two VFEs, we will help you plan for creating your own VFE and actually begin the process. Teachers should arrive with digital photos of a potential VFE site either on a CD or USB “thumb drive” or with photos posted to a website.  You may bring your own laptop.

Who are the facilitators?

In addtion to Jud and Sarah, other ReaL Teachers Melisa Detbarn, Joe Henderson, Laurie Van Vleet (and possibly others) will help to facilitate and share their experiences in developing virtual fieldwork as will project Co-Principal Investigator Don Duggan-Haas.

When is it?

Saturday March 24, 2007
10:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Lunch provided by the Upstate Institute at Colgate University.

Where is it?

Colgate University — exact location yet to be determined.

Who is sponsoring it?

The program is jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Colgate University, The Paleontological Research Institution and Museum of the Earth and the Mid-State Teacher Center.

Part 1: Contrasting Two VFEs

Sarah’s VFE is an extensive website with opportunities to look closer at many objects and sites along the way. Print the graphic organizer and then explore the geology in and near Norwich, New York. This experience is the more open-ended of the two examples and requires considerable class time for students and the teacher to complete.

Jud’s VFE (see below) was created in collaboration with his Perry colleagues and is an interactive Quicktime Movie. (It was created in Apple’s Keynote and also available in that format). This trip to Chapman Creek is intended to introduce students to virtual fieldwork and is necessarily more directed than Sarah’s. While this is a well-polished draft, it is still in development. Chapman Creek is located on the school grounds but would be difficult to access with a large group. The experience can be completed within a single lab period. The accompanying worksheet is available here: (.doc) (.html)

Download

Part 2: Your Questions

To prepare for the workshop, we intend to share the general, tentative plan for the workshop coupled with a survey of just a few questions with the ESPRIT (Earth Science Teachers’) Listserv. The response to that would frame most of the workshop agenda.

Here is a draft for that email:

We want your input as we prepare a teacher-lead workshop on creating virtual fieldwork experiences!

The ReaL Earth System Inquiry Project* is planning a teacher workshop on the use and development of virtual fieldwork experiences (VFEs). VFEs are designed to provide students the opportunity to explore an interesting field site, raise their own questions and take a closer look at things they choose to look at (with guidance, of course).

We expect to begin the workshop by contrasting two teacher created VFEs that differ substantially both technologically and pedagogically. We also think they are really cool and complementary to one another. We’ll start the workshop with Sarah Miller and Jud Spanneut talking about the VFE’s they’ve created; what they have in common and how they are different. The next couple of paragraphs describe the two VFEs briefly and provide the links so you can go off (virtually) and do the fieldwork yourself.

Sarah Miller’s VFE s is an extensive website with opportunities to look closer at many objects and sites along the way. Print the graphic organizer and then explore the geology in and near Norwich, New York. This experience is the more open-ended of the two examples and requires considerable class time for students and the teacher to complete.

Jud Spanneut and his colleagues at Perry Junior High School created a VFE (see below) that is an interactive Quicktime Movie. (It was created in Apple’s Keynote and also available in that format). This trip to Chapman Creek is intended to introduce students to virtual fieldwork and is necessarily more directed than Sarah’s. Chapman Creek is located on the school grounds but would be difficult to access with a large group. The experience can be completed within a single lab period. The accompanying worksheet is available here: (.doc) (.html)

What we do after that depends upon you. What we really want to do is help you (if you participate) develop a VFE that works for you.

1. What do you need to have happen in a four hour workshop?
2. How can we practically support you in development after you go home?

These questions are posted on Don’s blog (include link) and we’d appreciate your responses as we move ahead in planning the workshop. Sharing through the blog allows us all to see responses as they come in.

*ReaL stands for Regional and Local. ReaL Earth System Inquiry is an NSF-funded program offering professional development for early career Earth science teachers and curriculum resource development. The project’s primary objective is to support the teaching of regional and local geology in inquiry-oriented way.

Ok, ReaL Teachers — what needs changing in that before it goes out to ESPRIT?

Some recommendations: Issues to consider before creating your own VFE

Start with a particular concept, feature or idea you want students to understand. This is another way of saying: “Focus!” You’ll likely want to start small. Over time, you can expand what is in a particular VFE website, PowerPoint or whatever other format you might us. You can also create multiple VFEs, possibly in different formats.

We recommend starting locally. The ReaL in ReaL Earth Science Inquiry mean Regional and Local. A fundamental goal of the project is to help students build understanding of local and regional geology as a foundation to understand global processes and issues. Starting locally gives the students a connection and it allows you to return and take more photos, pay attention to whatever you missed on the last visit and it is also easier to actually bring students to the site which promises to be a richer experience than those provided virtually (though virtual visits ahead of time can truly improve the quality of the experience of actual visits).

Take photos before the workshop. Ideally, teachers will come to the workshop with some digital photos from a potential VFE site. Those photos should be on a CD, a thumb drive or already on a web site. You don’t need many — a VFE can be in the form of a PowerPoint presentation with just a few photos. Of course, feel free to bring (or have accessible) as many photos as you’d like.

Take plenty of closeups. All of us, or nearly all of us, who have created VFEs have gotten back after a trip, looked through our photos and thought that we did not take enough closeups. Remember, you want students to be able to look closely at things of their choosing.