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SERC resources for weather and climate educators
Bill Bruihler, Science Education Resource Center, Northfield, MN
The Science Education Resource Center (SERC – http://serc.carleton.edu) works to improve undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education through projects that support educators. SERC is an office of Carleton College and its work is funded primarily through National Science Foundation grants. Collaboration with others is a fundamental part of SERC's work. The office has special expertise in effective pedagogies, geoscience education, community organization, workshop leadership, digital libraries, website development and program and website evaluation. SERC provides a wide variety of online resources and workshop opportunities that may be of interest to meteorology and climatology educators.
SERC's online resources include hundreds of teaching activities as well as extended modules aimed at particular content or pedagogical issues. Users can explore the collections of activities through our faceted search interface which uses controlled vocabularies to provide refinement along user-defined axes. Browsing through these activities can be freely combined with free text searching, allowing users to control their view of the collections. Integration of the activities with information on the relevant pedagogy provides a pathway for educators to improve their instructional practices.
Examples of online resources available at SERC:
• Climate Change Collection is a suite of science education web-based resources covering natural climate dynamics as well as human impacts on the climate system. http://serc.carleton.edu/climatechange/index.html
• Teaching Climate Change: Lessons from the Past is a collection of teaching materials and classroom activities. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/climatechange/activities.html
• Earth Exploration Toolbook: Exploring Regional Differences in Climate Change. http://serc.carleton.edu/eet/climate/index.html
• Integrating Research & Education: Investigating Hurricane Katrina in your Classroom. http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/katrina/index.html
• Teaching Geosciences with Visualizations: Using Images, Animations, and Models Effectively, featuring tornados, hurricanes, atmospheric conditions, weather & climate, El Nino/La Nina, Hydrosphere/Cryosphere as well as many other geoscience topics. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization/index.html
SERC is also involved in offering professional development workshops for STEM educators. Our particular expertise is in taking the products of those workshops and developing online resources that continue to be valuable to the workshop participants as well as those who did not participate in the original workshop. A full listing of the past and present workshops is available at http://serc.carleton.edu/serc/workshops.html but below are some highlights that are particularly relevant to meteorology and climatology educators:
• Preparing for Academic Career is designed specifically for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who are interested in pursuing academic careers. Faculty members and administrators provide guidance and information that will help participants to be stronger candidates for academic positions and to succeed in academic jobs. Session topics focus on becoming both a successful teacher and researcher. This workshop is held annually. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/careerprep/index.html
• The Early Career Faculty workshop is offered each summer. This multi-day workshop is a stimulating and resource-rich environment where early career geoscience faculty members participate in sessions on topics including effective teaching strategies, course design, establishing a research program in a new setting, working with research students, balancing professional and personal responsibilities, and time-management. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/index.html
• Teaching Climate Change: Lessons from the Past http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/climatechange/index.html August 14-15, 2006 @ Montana State University
Acknowledgements: SERC projects are supported by the National Science Foundation through multiple awards, including: 0127141, 0304762, 0331930, 0507394, 0532768, 0614926, 0333402, 0435398, 0127310, 0525046, 0525183, 0532881, 0443076, 0549185, 0611544, 0243538, 0226243, and 213065. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Poster Session 1, Poster Session
Sunday, 14 January 2007, 5:00 PM-7:00 PM, Exhibit Hall C
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