Mystery homepage

Earthguide Alien Landing and OneNote

Introducing online notebooking using Microsoft OneNote

Mystery Detectives - Alien Landing and OneNote
July 19 10:30-12:00 San Diego County Office of Education, Joe Rindone Tech. Center

Presenters

Amy Weinheimer

Middle School Science Teacher
Pacific Beach Middle School
San Diego Unified School District

Amy Weinheimer is a science teacher at Pacific Beach Middle School, an International Baccalaureate School. She has taught grades 6, 7, and 8 science incorporating hands-on learning and real-world applications in her lessons.

Memorie Yasuda

Earthguide Developer
Geosciences Research Division
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California San Diego

Memorie Yasuda is a digital educational media producer focusing on content related to Earth Sciences at Earthguide in the Geosciences Research Division of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. She also teaches Oceanography at Grossmont College in El Cajon, California.

Summary - Mystery Epicenter is one in a series of project-based Earth science activities called Mystery Detectives. Each activity addresses standards-based learning and draws upon a wide range of engaging and relevant material. Mystery Detective units are produced by the Earthguide educational media group in the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Each unit is a collaboration between Earthguide, local teachers, UCSD undergraduate digital media majors and the scientific research community at Scripps.

Each unit is designed to accomodate and adapt to evolving standards, classroom situations, technology and challenges. Each unit is project-based and integrates online components with hands-on classroom elements. Each unit begins with an observation that sets up a mystery or conflict. Through the project-based acivity, students use existing as well as new skills and content knowledge.

In Mystery Alien Landing, groups of two students work together to determine a mystery location based on three clues - a rock that reveals tectonic setting, evidence about the biome, and a cultural artifact. In the context of the adventure, studente learn about the relative availability of water resources at locations around the world. They practice finding places based on latitude and longitude coordinates. They learn about the dependence of people, as well as other living things on the conditions of their physical environment. As a class, they the report about exotic locations around the world and assess each other's work using an rubric they designed collaboratively. They celebrate the completing of their project.

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