With the ever-expanding World Wide Web there is a vast array of earth sciences resources available to us all, of which the sites below are just a few. If know of any other freely available resources online or you have a favourite geoscience site, please send the URL, a description and what you like about the site, to PESA’s publisher, Brian Wickins, email brian@resolutions-group.com.au so that fellow members can benefit from your industrious searching?
Little Kids | Teenagers | Adults | Teaching Aids | All Ages
Little Kids
Here is a taste of the amazing resources you can find to appeal to students of all ages.
Edible/Inedible experiments. Make a fault and eat the results of an earthquake.
http://www.madsci.org/experiments/Meet the Australian dinosaurs and find out a little about where they lived and what Australia looked like at that time. It would make a good launching topic to discuss how swamps formed in the Mesozoic.
http://www.abc.net.au/dinosaurs/meet_the_dinos/ozdino1.htmAustralia is the only place where there is evidence of a dinosaur stampede. How did their tracks become preserved?
http://www.dinosaurtrackways.com.au/index.htmlTemplates to make paper dinosaurs.
http://www.rain.org/~philfear/download-a-dinosaur.htmlGreat summary of fractional distillation.
http://www.moorlandschool.co.uk/earth/oilrefinery.htmHow to make a model oil well.
http://earthnet-geonet.ca/activities/activity9_e.php
Teenagers
Mordor exists and it is 70 km north east of Alice Springs. A great springboard to talk about plate tectonics.
http://www.ga.gov.au/news/mordor.jspIf you can’t remember your stratigraphic chart maybe China Owls will help you!
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=MnemonicsDid the earth move for you. Great movies about earthquakes.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/faultline/activezone/media.htmlHave you ever seen an Arabian sea dust storm or watched sediment flooding into the Bay of Bengal?
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/Ways to bring earth science into chemistry, biology and physics classes..
http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/learnnet/jesei/index2.htmBuild your own Sydney Basin
http://www.ga.gov.au/education/teachers/resources.jsp
Adults
The SEG Distinguished Lecturers Presentation Library. This site is amazing. Watch the video and flick through the powerpoint presentations at your leisure. I have always wanted to know more about spectral decomposition.
http://ce.seg.org/library/Everything you had forgotten about sequence stratigraphy. It contains animations, lectures and detailed information about petrology. I am a fan of the depositional analogues page.
http://strata.geol.sc.edu/index.html
Teaching Aids
How to use visualisations to help communicate geoscientific ideas.
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization/explain_ideas.htmlVisualisations about almost everything!
http://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/navigation/visualization.cfmTravel through time while you look at the Australian continent over the past 545 million years.
http://www.minerals.org.au/education/secondary/secondary_resources/down_to_earth_learning_objects_1-3So you have to give a presentation to young students? Take tips from the experts.
http://www.tryscience.org/teachers/teachercontest03.htmlThis site provides a great summary of what methods appeal to students of different ages and grades.
http://earthnet-geonet.ca/toolbox/