Category: Earth Science Education
Massive amounts of Earth’s stored carbon is located in boreal forests, including those in northern Canada and Alaska. As temperatures rise and wildfires become more frequent, scientists are studying the boreal forest’s transformation from carbon sink to carbon source. We partnered with Dr. Brian Buma at the University of Colorado Denver and the Environmental Defense […]
Stephanie Harmon is a Science Consultant with the Partnership Institute for Math and Science Education Reform (PIMSER) in Kentucky. Previously, she taught Earth science and physics at Rockcastle County High School in Mount Vernon, Kentucky, and has consulted on several Concord Consortium projects. For my students in rural Kentucky, floods are personal. In July 2022, […]
Michael Focht is a middle school teacher in Titusville, Florida, and field tested our GeoHazard modules. Do the names Matthew, Nicole, Ian, or Irma give you pause? Are they long-lost cousins? Friends from high school? For the students in my middle school science classes, these are the names of hurricanes that have impacted them over […]
Turn on the news and you’ll see horrific images of flames enveloping hillsides, engulfing homes, and destroying entire communities. This year’s wildfire season is on track, once again, to be one of the worst in history. The number of acres burned in California in August 2024 is already more than double the number of acres […]
The WATERS (Watershed Awareness using Technology and Environmental Research for Sustainability) project recently ended with a Master Teacher Workshop at our Concord office for selected teachers who participated in the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research with excellence and enthusiasm. The goal of the workshop was to exchange best practices for teaching the now freely available, […]
Last summer, thick plumes of wildfire smoke from northern Canada blanketed cities as far south as Washington, D.C., in an eerie orange haze. Record-breaking wildfires in provinces across Canada resulted in catastrophic damage to homes and communities, the destruction of more than 45.7 million acres of forest, and dangerously unhealthy air quality throughout the Northeast […]
2024 marks our 30th anniversary. Our origins reach back to a simple beginning, on a single-board computer with a mere one kilobyte of memory. But it’s not about the computer itself—it’s never just the technology. It’s what the computer made possible that matters. When Bob Tinker connected a KIM-1 computer to an expansion board he’d […]
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 […]
Stephanie Seevers is an Earth science teacher in Colorado and a consultant on the TecRocks project. I was talking to my 9th grade Earth and Space Science students recently about why they think so many people lack a solid understanding of our planet and its history. We brainstormed ideas, and while several theories sounded valid, […]
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 […]