Blog

The power of a scientist’s visit

Middle school students meet a geoscientist on Zoom.

Shelley Olds is an instructional designer at EarthScope Consortium and a partner on the YouthQuake project. Generating thoughtful questions—and building the confidence to ask them—is a cornerstone of scientific inquiry. Middle school students in the YouthQuake project had the rare opportunity to ask geoscience professionals about their journeys into STEM careers and explore their own […]

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Using multiple visual representations to understand the earthquake cycle

The GeoCoder model displays block code (procedural representation, left), the Deformation Simulation (geometric representation, upper right), and the deformation over time graph (graphical representation, bottom right).

Symbols, objects, maps, graphs, and simulations are all powerful tools for conveying information. However, some complex ideas just can’t be captured in a single representation. In these cases, multiple visualizations can be used together to convey and connect several pieces of related information. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, news organizations used a combination of […]

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New YouthQuake project engages urban middle school students in geoscience practices

The Seismic Explorer showing the number of earthquakes that occurred in California between 1980 and the present.

With most California residents living within a 30-minute drive of one of the state’s 500 active fault zones, the threat of earthquakes looms large. Scientists are constantly monitoring seismic activity, conducting risk assessments to determine when and where earthquakes may occur, and predicting the potential impacts to surrounding communities. Our new National Science Foundation-funded YouthQuake […]

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Four key research findings from NSF-funded GeoCode project

Image of active volcano

Every education project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) is subject to flexible yet high expectations for the proposed research. NSF is investing in our ability to develop new technology, new curriculum, and new research that contributes innovative ideas and products to further the field of STEM education. When we are awarded an NSF […]

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