This site is designed to engage students in grades 7-12 in activities that focus on collaboration and communication strategies. These activities will strengthen student understanding of and ability to use collaborative processes and communication practices to clarify, conceptualize, and make decisions. Students will compare the risks of varying courses of action that confront scientists and engineers. ... Full description.

In this lesson, students learn about meteors, meteorites, and comets by reading and discussing a related New York Times article about the Leonid meteor showers and the methods that scientists are using to learn from these meteors. Students then create and observe a comet in their classroom. Full description.

The Antarctic Meteorological Research Center provides recent and archived imagery of icebergs, including movies. Icebergs from the Ross, Ronne, and Larsen ice shelves are pictured. Links to a webcam, a Frequently Asked Questions page, and other sites providing pictures and information about icebergs are also provided. Full description.

Students investigate the challenges of living and working in Antarctica and the technologies that help researchers meet those challenges. This six-day unit includes: teacher tools (downloadable readings, breakdowns of tasks, teacher strategies, grading sheet and rubric), an online activity (students review the preparation materials given to researchers traveling to Antarctica), classroom activities ... Full description.

The purpose of this lesson is to use NASA CERES instrument cloud data and a weather map to explore cloud coverage during a winter storm. Students will map locations using latitude and longitude coordinates as well as use a microset of satellite data to investigate cloud characteristics by applying percentage to determine cloud cover. When atmospheric scientists, including meteorologists, study weather ... Full description.

Solar energy is radiant energy that is produced by the Sun. Every day the Sun radiates an enormous amount of energy. How much solar energy a place on Earth receives depends on several conditions. In this lesson, students will explore real NASA satellite data for energy from the Sun and cloud cover for their area to determine if they can harness this solar energy, a renewable energy source, by using ... Full description.

The purpose of this resource is to measure the conductivity of water at a freshwater hydrology site. Students calibrate and take electrical conductivity measurements using an electrical conductivity meter. Students estimate the total dissolved solids from the electrical conductivity measurements. Full description.

The purpose of this resource is to introduce students to the importance of soil. In the first activity, students generate a list of why soils are important. In the second activity, students are asked to describe the five factors that form a unique soil profile and to explore these concepts. In the third activity, students are shown a demonstration of how much soil there is on Earth that is available ... Full description.

The purpose of the resource is to produce a land cover type map from the digital file of a Landsat satellite image using MultiSpec software. Full description.

The purpose of this resource is to help students understand the connection between remote sensing, computer imagery, and land cover assessment. Students translate their maps created in the beginning activity into digital code and exchange the digitized versions of their maps with students in another school. Full description.