Special Report from Scientific American on Global Change

A report on Climate Change was released at the end of 2007 and posted on Scientific American. It was written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which is their 4th assessment of the "science of climate change, its impacts and possible solutions."

Other links to explore from this website:

• State of the Science: Beyond the Worst Climate Change Scenario
• Earth in Heat: 10 Views of a Warming World (PPT)
• Climate Change Impacts (interactive map)
• Clash: What Will Climate Change Cost Us? (Q&A)
• 10 Solutions for Climate Change
• Scientific American's Climate Change Coverage

Great resources for the classroom!

All about earthquakes....make a quake

Take your students through TLC Discovery.com Earthquakes.

A great site that is broken down into several sections:

- Make-A-Quake: earthquake simulator. Students simulate different earthquake situations to see what will happen to the structure of a high rise building.

- As The World Churns: a flash simulation that shows how the world has split and the how the continents have gone their separate ways.

- Gallery of Devastation: view images and information on recent quakes from around the world.

- Tremor Tech: looks at how technology helps to predict where and when quakes will occur.

- Seismic Links: Further resources and links on seismic activity.

Reducing your Carbon Footprint

What is your carbon footprint? There has been a lot in the news lately about reducing one's carbon footprint.

What is a carbon footprint? "It is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide." (from: Carbon Footprint)

Carbon Footprint gives some tips on reducing your primary footprint:

• holidays (don't go by air)
• electricity (sign up to renewable energy)
• gas (try using solar wate heating)
• traveling around (use public transport as much as possible)
• car share (sign up to a car share scheme)

BeGreen also has a lot of tips an information on reducing your cabon footprint including a carbon calculator. Looking at the amount of electricity used, how many miles you drive each year, how many cities you have flown to in a year, and the amount of therms (natural gas) used each month or year....you will then be able to calculate your carbon footprint.


an inconvenient truth has made a lot of news since it has been released as DVD. Vice President Al Gore presents an impactful look at global warming. The website has a free educational guide to go with the DVD.

Other sites to checkout:

• New York Times: On the Web, an Advanced Carbon Calculator for Personal Use
• ABC News: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint
• Hippy Green: Reducing your Carbon Footprint
• Enironmental Leader: Companies measure the Carbon Footprint of consumer products

Quest Network BlueZones: "Explore * Question * Ask"

Quest Network BlueZone is an inspirational site for journeys through global education. BlueZone was founded by explorer and National Geographic writer Dan Buettner.

Registering online for free gives educators access to all the resources and videos for a variety of global projects from looking at common threads in lifestyle (health and fitness) to looking at your senior community.

Two quests to check out are on Central America and Okinawa, Japan.

How BlueZone works is registered classes log onto the website and interact with the exploration team that may be anywhere in the world. They vote online to decide what the exploration team will explore the next day. The next day the students get to watch through video, exactly what the exploration team was voted to do.

Pretty cool.

NASA Learning Technologies

NASA Learning Technologies consists of 6 separate areas of learning:

WorldWind 1.4
World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.

NASA SVS
NASA SVS (Scientific Visualization Studio) has a collection of visually intense animations on a global scale as well as a variety of samples up close.

Math Trax
MathTrax is a graphing tool for middle school and high school students to graph equations, physics simulations or plot data files. The graphs have descriptions and sound so you can hear and read about the graph. Blind and low vision users can access visual math data and graph or experiment with equations and datasets. Developers site on Math Trax.

Virtual Lab
Virtual Lab completely emulates a scanning electron microscope and allows any user to zoom and focus into a variety of built-in microscopic samples.

What's The Difference
A highly accessible and a simple to use "compare and contrast" tool for students. It is easily customizable to go well beyond the included module that covers the Solar System. "Solar System Explorer" covers every planet in depth with important facts such as atmosphere, composition, diameter, distance to sun, gravity strength, and simulated views of the surface.

Planets
The Celestia Exploration activity - explore outer space.

Social Sciences Tools

DiscoverOurEarth is based on the research done in the geoinformatics lab at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (University of California, San Diego). There is a wide range of information related to the Earth sciences, accompanied by images, graphs, maps, and movies. Discovery topics: Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Topography, Plate Tectonics, and Sea Level Change. Web tools for on-hands learning such as: interactive mapping, virtual experiments and interactive 3D graphics.

USGS (US Geological Service) website has an online tool called Map-It that is a simple form that you fill in the longitude/latitude pairs as input and the form "plots them on a Mercator projection map along with land/sea and political boundaries."

Strange Maps is an mapping blog that has postings on a wide range of interesting maps and wonderful annotations. Today's posting is a world map on driving orientation....who drives on the left or the right hand side of the road. Some great stories and maps to spark discussion in your class.

PRI's The World is a is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.
With podcasts, colourful pictures and stories with a global perspective, this site brings the world to your students. Check out the Geo Quiz that has a new question posted everyday for your students to ponder.