Close to home: The 2010 Ed Roy Award

Some great news from Geospectrum - the latest Ed Roy Award winner is Jason Pittman, the lead science resource teacher at Hollin Meadows Elementary School in Alexandria, VA. This has me completely excited, because Hollin Meadows was the first elementary school I attended, and it's literally steps from home. It's a math and science focus school, and it's one of the first places I started getting excited about geology. (I even remember drawing volcanoes on one morning journal exercise...)

The Hollin Meadows website has a great section devoted to their science lab, and I'm sure Mr. Pittman had a hand in it, since he's also a top web designer. Have a look!

Here's a little about the award from AGI:

Given annually, the Edward C. Roy, Jr. Award recognizes one classroom teacher from kindergarten to eighth grade for his or her leadership and innovation in earth science education. This award is named in honor of Dr. Edward C. Roy, Jr., who was a strong and dedicated supporter of earth science education. Mr. Pittman will be presented with the Edward C. Roy, Jr. Award at the 2010 National Science Teachers Association National Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Other finalists for the 2010 award are Greer Lynn Harvell of Clifford C. Meigs Middle School in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and John Schaefers of Ingomar Middle School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

They haven't updated the main part of their website yet, but the Ed Roy award page has some more info about applying, as well as past winners. If you know anyone who teaches K-12 earth science and you think they're doing a stellar job, I encourage you to get them to apply for this - it's a great opportunity for recognition!

Everyone at Hollin Meadows must be really proud of Mr. Pittman - and I am, too, even though I only have a very loose connection to the school now. It's been a good few months for them - they also hosted the First Lady in November, and had a chance to show off some of the extensive flower and vegetable gardens that make up an important part of their science program. Congrats to Mr. Pittman and Hollin Meadows!

Looking for something to do for Earth Science Week?

Even if you can't give your time to sponsor an event for Earth Science Week this year, you can help people realize the importance of Earth science by giving a little bit of your money. (For instance, I'm swamped with coursework and research and totally unlikely to pull together any event bigger than a Facebook post, but at least this way I can help someone else with an Earth science project!)

Every year, ScienceBlogs sponsors a donation drive with DonorsChoose.org to help bring science to classrooms in financially struggling US schools. This year, Kim Hannula of All of My Faults Are Stress Related, Anne Jefferson of Highly Allocthonous, and Erik Klemetti of Eruptions have put together a geoscience-related donations page where you can sponsor a school project for students around the country to learn about the Earth. There are a number of different projects to choose from, ranging from soil science to weather to hydrology to seismology. (In particular, there's a group in Washington that needs to raise money for soil testing kits to go with a guest speaker's presentation, and they only have ten days left!)

This is a great way to make sure that Earth science outreach and learning happen in schools that are struggling to make ends meet. I'm definitely going to donate what I can, and I hope that all of you will think about doing the same!

A new semester

For me, this means some welcome changes. As a result of earning an NSF Graduate Fellowship, I don't have to TA this year, so I actually have more time to sit down and work on my own research (instead of spending a lot of time - including whole weekends at one point - just keeping up with grading). This also means that my committee has been encouraging me to take advantage of said funding and go for a PhD, but more on that later.

One interesting thing that happened to me last week was that I was asked to be a group leader in UB's training conference for TAs. This is a two-day gathering in which TAs, new or otherwise, meet to learn about teaching techniques, how to handle a classroom, academic honesty/dishonesty, etc. For new TAs, it might be the only chance they get to acquire a little classroom training before they find themselves in charge of a classroom (something that I wrote about last year around this time). I still find this ridiculous; just because you've made it to graduate school doesn't mean you're qualified to teach, although there are certainly a lot of great TAs out there who manage just fine.

Another unsatisfying aspect about the conference is that it wasn't geared toward science students. In fact, most of the bigger science departments at UB hold their own version of the conference, which I think would be much more useful. Fortunately, the geology department is moving toward that idea. I think a hybrid, where we invite some of the speakers from the regular conference to come and present, as well as having current geology TAs and professors work with incoming grads, would work well.

There were aspects of the conference that worked well, though. At the end of the final day, groups meet to hold micro-teaching sessions where each person gives a five-minute lesson on a topic of their choice. It doesn't need to be in their discipline; I've seen people teach their groups about how to shave, how to brew beer, how to decipher binary, and the best way to catch and eradicate an invasive saltwater fish. The catch is that these presentations are taped, and everyone gets to watch themselves (and their groupmates), and critique each other. Because it's hard to see yourself when you're in front of a class, you get the benefit of evaluating your own performance, and you get constructive criticism from your peers. (Inevitably everyone cringes to see themselves on tape - even me - but they also usually say that the micro-teaching is the most helpful part of the conference.)

So in the end, there rae good and bad things about the TA conference. For new TAs, like I was last year, it's a bit of a lifeline - maybe the only chance they'll have to learn how to teach before they're responsible for their own classroom. For returning TAs, it can be a reminder of things that they've forgotten in the grind of trying to get everything done, cover the whole lab book, grade all the papers. But as I mentioned, treating all the conference-goers as if they're automatically going to be in the position of professors isn't as helpful to TAs who are mainly going to be running labs or recitation sections, especially if their department doesn't yet have their own training session.

I am curious about what other people have experienced, though. Is this a common thing at other schools? Did any of you get special training before you found yourself in front of a classroom, or did you wing it and hope for the best? What advice would you give to incoming TAs? (If I get enough responses, I'd like to do another post on tips for TAs - so please comment!)

It's course evaluation time!*

And so far I've seen (paraphrased, of course):

Labs/TA were horrible
Labs/TA were okay
Loved lab
Labs were informative and relatively harmless (I would have laughed even more if it had said 'mostly harmless' and referenced the HGTG)
TA is elitist (Because I wouldn't give this person a second make-up date for a quiz they missed, never mind that I didn't have to give them a first one)
TA is responsible and patient
Boring lab material
Exciting/interesting lab material
Lab books sucked (This I totally agree with.)
Quizzes should only test us on what we've already done in lab, not the reading we're supposed to do to prepare for lab (Sorry, that's what the purpose of those quizzes were, since none of you read the labs in advance until I started giving quizzes!)
Had to do all the questions (under "What did you find annoying?")
Needs more group work
Needs less in-class work
Why do we have to come to labs anyway when we can just do the work on our own? (Despite the workbook lab manuals that we had to teach from, mostly because that's the point of being in a class, and not teaching yourself from a library book.)

And my favorite, in answer to "Would you recommend this class to a friend?":

"In the event that I acquire any friends, I would think it not advisable to start our relationship talking about school. Perhaps music, or Darfur?"

I have no idea where that came from, but it was awesome.



*Note the false cheerfulness in that title. What I really mean is, "I care, but that's moot at this point because there's nothing I could have done about the crappy lab books, and I'm not teaching next semester so I won't have any input in the future."

Using Google Earth to visualize volcanic and seismic activity

I haven't been posting much lately (teaching labs and trying to wrap my head around volcano seismology is eating up my free time), but I have been trying to keep up with new developments. One really neat one is the release of the newest Google Earth and the Oceans layer. My last two labs have been oceanography and waves/tides/currents, so I've been leaning heavily on Google Earth to help my students visualize things. And it works! They're actually engaged, especially since they get to navigate around instead of just watching me give a lecture.

The Oceans layer comes with a lot of other sublayers, including one from National Geographic about plate tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes. Being a geology geek, I already have several volcano/earthquake layers from the Smithsonian, USGS, etc. So, I thought it might be interesting to compare the old and new offerings.

Here's the first - the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program's catalog of Holocene volcanoes.

I like this layer because clicking on a volcano pops up the text of the GVP webpage on that volcano, complete with photo and links. What I don't like about the layer is that this is all it does - nothing about plate tectonics, nothing about older volcanoes. You can see where the volcanoes are, but not (at first glance) why. Also, I'd opt for a snazzier symbol; that little X-and-box thing is efficient, but kind of boring.

Then there's the USGS layers for earthquakes. (They don't seem to have a volcanoes layer, but they do have an interactive map of recent activity here). One EQ layer shows earthquakes by age (i.e., in the past hour, day, week, etc.), and the other by depth. I like the clean look of these, the small legend, and the information that pops up for each earthquake, complete with links to the USGS online record and

The most recent earthquakes are shown in red (hours ago), days-old earthquakes in orange, and months-old earthquakes in yellow.

Here the shallower earthquakes are in red and orange, and the deepest are in blues and purples.

I like these because the symbols are easy to read, the legend is simple, and there's information about tectonic plate motions (including rates of movement) and boundary locations. The layers also updates themselves each time you open up Google Earth - very useful if you're teaching a class on plate tectonics, and want your students to keep track of earthquake activity in a particular area. You can even highlight specific types of plate boundaries, which are have their own separate sublayers.

The USGS has one more layer of historical earthquakes, with M3 in the past 90 days, M4 in the past year, and so on up to M9 (since 1970 - only one of these, the 2004 Sumatra earthquake).

No legend or drawn-out plate boundaries on this one, but a wealth of information and popups for each earthquake. It's especially good for highlighting plate boundaries using seismic activity.

Finally there's the new National Geographic plate tectonics layer. They went all out on this one - sublayers for plate boundaries, volcanoes, hot spots, earthquakes, plate motions...the whole shebang. It's actually quite crowded at first. Unfortunately, to download it you have to turn on the main National Geographic sublayer of the Oceans layer, search for the NG symbol in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and click to download the plate tectonics bit. This is a major drawback for the NG information, and in the future I hope they list their information somewhere instead of making you hunt for it on the globe.

One thing that I severely dislike about this layer is the legend. It's far too large and covers up a significant chunk of the globe. It's not adjustable, either, so unless you immediately memorize all the symbology, you have to keep turning it on and off. The sheer volume of information shown is also distracting - it's better to break it down.

This one shows the plate boundary locations and types, and relative plate motions. Unlike the USGS layer, however, there's no information about rates of movement.

This view shows some of the "Selected Hot Spots". I'm a little iffy on whether all of the locations this layer shows are properly considered hot spots - there's a lot of argument about these phenomena anyway. The bad thing about this layer is that beside displaying the names, there's no pop-up info about these locations, nor is there any explanation of what a hot spot is.

This view is showing the "Notable earthquakes since 1900" and "Quakes since 1900 greater than 6.5 magnitude" layers. Again, no information about the individual events, other than marking their location. I suppose it's useful for highlighting areas of high seismic activity, but it would be much better if there were at least magnitudes and dates listed for each event, so someone could look them up elsewhere.

And, finally, the volcanoes - small triangles are Holocene eruptions, and large ones are eruptions since 1900. Yet again, there's no further information - this is where the Smithsonian layer outstrips the National Geographic one, despite its simplicity.

So what's the final verdict? Use all of them! I'd reserve the National Geographic layers for general overview - showing the locations of plate boundaries, eruptions and earthquakes, for example - but use the USGS and Smithsonian layers for more in-depth examinations. The USGS layer is especially good for teaching seismology and plate tectonics, since it gives information on plate motions and individual seismic events - and links it all to the USGS database.

I'm looking forward to reviewing new layers as I find them, and hopefully I'll get a chance to use them in my teaching.

Best labs for introductory geology courses?

My department will be restructuring some of their introductory geology labs soon, and I was asked my opinion of the labs that I taught last semester. I was pretty brutal about some of them: they were difficult both to teach and to get the students to understand. When you're spending most of your time apologizing for the shortcomings of a flow chart that the students are supposed to be using to identify minerals, for example, neither you nor the students are getting much out of the lesson.

There were a number of other issues with the labs, but one of the big questions about the intro labs in general was what were the most valuable labs for different categories of student. The way our courses are likely to be restructured, we may end up with one general geo course and lab for the fall semester, and then two - one for geology majors and one geared more for environmental majors and non-geo-majors - in the spring.

So if you're going to split up classes that way, how do you create a set of labs that both hooks the potential majors but doesn't overwhelm the people who are just in the class for a science requirement? How do you make sure the majors are getting instruction in essential, basic skills, but still teach the non-majors something they find interesting and useful? To make things more complicated, how do you do this in a lab that, because of the 300+ person class size, meets every other week - meaning you only have six or seven labs to do this in?

My undergraduate intro geology lab followed this progression:

• Mineral identification
• Rock identification, rock types and the rock cycle
• Structural features of sedimentary rocks (including mapping on aerial photographs, geologic map interpretation, and geologic cross sections)
• Plate tectonics
• Geologic interpretation of topo maps, aerial photos, and satellite images (emphasis on fluvial features)
• Ocean and coastal processes

Looking back on it, it's both a little scattered and very heavy on what I tend to associate with geology rather than geography or environmental science - rocks and minerals, structure and tectonics, mapping. I remember finding the rock and mineral and mapping labs very useful, but I knew that I wanted to major in geology, and wanted to learn as much as possible as fast as possible.

The lab that I taught last semester went a little differently:

• Rock descriptions (really basic stuff, not requiring mineral or rock IDs)
  
• Mineral identification
• Sedimentary rock identification
• Impact cratering
• Streamflow processes (with stream table)
• Stratigraphic columns, topo maps and geologic cross sections
• Folding and faulting

This set of labs reflects some of the research preferences in our department, planetary geoscience and Western NY geology (including the evolution of Niagara Falls and the Niagara Gorge).

I feel like there are pros and cons to each of the sets, but my viewpoint isn't necessarily what's going to be good for a nonmajor who needs a science requirement. And whether or not that nonmajor goes on in geology, it's important for them to get something useful out of the class.

So, how to compromise? It's a tough process. I'm not the one who gets to make the final decisions, but I think that there are some basic concepts that an intro lab should cover:

1. Minerals. This is the basis of geology - if you don't know the minerals, you don't know the building blocks of the Earth. Everyone coming out of an intro lab should be able to recognize quartz and calcite, as one of the professors here said.
2. Rock cycle and types. This is a chance to introduce both the rock types and the processes that create them, as well as a few basic rock names in each type. Students can then take this knowledge on to a petrology class (usually taught for igneous and metamorphic rocks, I've found) and a sedimentology/stratigraphy class (for the sed rocks).
3. Surface processes. Weathering and erosion, as well as fluvial features could be included here. I found that my students had very little concept of how sediment was formed, transported, and turned into rocks. The lab that we did with the stream table helped fix some of that, and it was their favorite one; they were the most engaged and spent the most time thinking about what they were observing. This also would have been a fun one to do outside, but it was too cold by the time we got to it.
4. Atmosphere and weather. I can think of a lot of people who watch the weather forecast every night without having the faintest idea how it's put together, or the difference between weather and climate, or (for example) why it snows a lot south of Buffalo but not so much north of the city. (This is not the case today, however.) Having a basic knowledge of the structure of the atmosphere and how certain types of weather and climates come about is important for life - you've got to deal with weather every day, after all.
   
5. The solar system/geology on other planets. With all the great research going on these days into formation and evolution of other planets in the solar system, it would be a shame to skip planetary geology in an intro course. (It's also a good opportunity to chuck things at sandboxes, which seems to have gone over fairly well in this week's labs.)
   
6. Maps. Absolutely NO ONE should leave a geology or environmental science course without knowing how a map is put together and how to read it. In the age of GPS navigation and Mapquest, it's honestly shocking how many students I encounter that can't deal with a paper map. Including topographic and geologic maps in this section would be good too, especially for majors, but also as a way of exposing students to something other than a talking car computer or a fold-out road map. (This would also be a great chance to integrate Geocaching into a lesson and get the students outside.)
   
7. Natural hazards/disasters. This would be a favorite of mine just for the chance to talk about volcanoes, but it's a chance to separate students from what they hear on the news (which is often wrong) and explain what's really happening when, say, a hundred-year flood occurs, or why an earthquake will or won't create a tsunami (and what to do if you're in danger of getting hit by one). It's also exciting stuff, which is always important if you're trying to hook people on a major.
   

Just a few thoughts on what I'd find useful as a beginning geology student, really. I'm sure that the basics would vary depending on the department and who's qualified to teach certain subjects.

So what would you all, who collectively have much more experience with this sort of thing, want to see in an introductory lab? At some point I might get asked to help decide this for my current department, so your input is greatly appreciated!

Don't let them see you sweat

One of the students in my intro lab was chatting with me in class recently and mentioned that she was planning on applying to grad school, and wanted to know if I had any advice for being a TA. Now, I'm still working the bugs out of the process myself, since I've only been doing this for a few months, but it did get me thinking about what I should tell her.

Our situations are a bit different - I'm in science, while she'll be looking for programs in performing arts, and will likely be put in charge of a full course rather than a lab section associated with a course. What isn't likely to be too different, though, is that she'll be entering with little or no preparation in how to teach a class, aside from maybe a few days in a "crash course" seminar (like I had in August).

I didn't actually find that seminar to be very helpful, mainly because it seemed geared toward students who would be teaching introductory courses in which they were mainly responsible for choosing the course layout - developing their own syllabus, readings, assignments, etc. I don't do that - we get pre-written labs that roughly parallel what the students are learning in lecture, and maybe do a little additional lecturing on the side. So attending a seminar where we learned "think-pair-share" and other active learning techniques was neat in theory, but not really applicable to a structured setting like a lab course. (We did have one short session on teaching labs, but I was so annoyed by the fact that the invited TA wouldn't shut up and stop talking over the professor who was running the thing that I didn't get much out of it.)

Anyway, the gist of it is that I've either been relying on advice from other TAs or learning on my feet. This is both good and bad; the good is, you find out really quickly what works and what doesn't, but the bad part is, my first class of the week usually gets shorted in terms of quality of teaching because they end up being the guinea pigs. My TA group does get together and go through the labs and experiments beforehand, but there's a big difference between when we do the lab and when the students have to do it; we often find that something that makes sense to us is totally incomprehensible to the class. This doesn't do much for my nerves. I apparently don't show it, but I get really nervous about standing in front of a bunch of people and being responsible for them learning something properly. I'm always worried that I won't teach something in a way that makes sense, or that I'll get something wrong and then be embarrassed about it in front of a bunch of people who aren't all that much younger than me.

Fortunately, I realized something early on: The students don't know when you make a mistake, they don't usually remember it unless it was something really stupid, and for the most part, they're not out to get you. Some of them really want to learn and some of them just want to pass and finish their science requirement. A few will want to go on in the field, and you want to try and do the best job you can for their sake, so they don't have to relearn it later - but you shouldn't let it totally consume your time or attention.

So here are a few more of the things I've learned so far:

• Make sure you know what you're going to teach ahead of time. If you need a powerpoint, don't wait until five minutes before class to put it together; if you're talking about a reading, read it; if you're doing a lab, try it out so you know where your students are likely to screw up.
• If you're in grad school and you have a TAship, someone thinks you're competent enough to be in front of a class. Try not to doubt your ability to teach.
  
• Don't give them the answers, but don't not answer questions. Lead them; say "How would you solve this problem?" Make them go through their process and point out where they might be going wrong.
  
• Group work sucks - there's no way to get around that. Group work in class works better than group work on projects, though - if you're not around to watch, someone will always end up doing all the work and someone else will slack off. Be cautious about assigning out-of-class group work.
• Anecdotes and analogies keep people interested. (Students have much more fun learning about impact cratering when you let them throw pumpkins off the roof of the building, for example.)
• Unless you're really doing a terrible job, your salary doesn't depend on their end-of-semester evaluations. Not everyone is going to like you all the time, but as long as you make sure that they understand what you're teaching (ask them!), you don't have to be the "cool" TA. (Although that helps...)
• Don't stress over the ones that choose to fail - and by this I mean people who just don't make any effort, not the ones who do the work and ask for help and still don't do well (keep plugging for those). You're responsible for letting someone know that they're doing badly, but they need to come to you for help. Don't spend all your time chasing them around.
• Don't take yourself too seriously! Expect courtesy and respect from your students, and give them the same, but don't forget that you're all just students - joke a little, sympathize when they have midterms, ask how their plays or sports competitions or concerts went.

So far, I'm finding that I enjoy teaching, at least for the short time I do it every week. I don't know that I'd want to make a career of it, or that I'd want to teach more involved and larger classes, but for now...hey, it's not so bad!