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SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT
INSTITUTE Failure in Madrid; European Green Deal Adopted CCC Board of Governors Adopt Climate Change and Sustainability Goals Doomsday Clock Set at 100 Seconds to Midnight SEI Proposes Network of Weather/Air Quality Stations Air Pollution Worsening in Los Angeles Region New Climate Corps Fellow at City College In the Classroom: Resources from Carleton College UC Certificate for Citizen Scientists News Briefs |
In the Classroom:
Resources from Carleton College By Randy Adsit We’ve all been there—you need something to jazz up a lesson, or maybe you just need an entire lesson! So you search online, hoping… I recommend that you start your search at SERC — the Science Education Resource Center is a grant-funded office at Carleton College (Minnesota) founded to improve education in the Earth Sciences and beyond. By “beyond” they mean they have material for all the earth sciences, plus astronomy, biology, economics, math, political science, philosophy, and more. Because SERC is grant funded, it could disappear in the future, when the grant runs out. Wouldn’t it be great if the Department of Education recognized the value of something like this, and funded it permanently? But I digress. The web address for SERC is: <https://serc.carleton.edu>. You can search by topic, place, type of lesson, etc. You can also focus on one of the projects hosted by SERC. My favorite, by far, is InTeGrate, at <https://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/index.html>. The name is short for “Interdisciplinary Teaching About Earth for a Sustainable Future. They are serious about “interdisciplinary,” and have material such as “Women and Water”, “Environmental Justice”, and “Water Sustainability in Cities.” No matter what you teach, there will be something for you in InTeGrate. For example, if you teach English, they have “Climate Science in Literary Texts.” If you teach health, there are units on lead, healthy food, and composting toilets. There’s even a project for film students to make environmental videos. The materials on their web site are peer reviewed, so you don’t have to worry about getting things that don’t work in the classroom. And they encourage you to adapt their modules to fit your needs. They have materials for lectures, labs, and online courses. I have been using SERC, and especially InTeGrate, to develop our new oceanography lab at East. Since I’m not using a textbook, I’ve really depended on these web sites for free, quality material. The InTeGrate labs are usually the ones students like the most. Do you have a favorite web site for classroom material? Or maybe you have developed a terrific lesson, lab, field trip, demonstration, or whatever, that you’d like to share with your colleagues? Please contact us! We love submissions! |