Community Blogs
Open social media sharing options menu
Community Blogs
Discover how the GLOBE community is engaging in all things GLOBE through the community blog posts below.
Learn how to create a GLOBE community blog post.
Filter By:
Blogs List
There are several things I am taking from the Learning to Research conference. The main thing is the number of contacts with people who are committed to the GLOBE program and understand the value it represents to educators. I got to know the teachers from the schools whose data my students used in their surface temperature campaign last year. This is my first experience with so many people who are doing many different things that benefit students and who feel as strongly as I do. I came with the expectation of acquiring the skills to design a study of aerosols and ozone in Huntington, ...
Read More »
Posted in:
L2R Expectations 2012
From learning to research is indeed a transformational way to look at teaching and learning from both student and teacher perspectives. Throughout the past academic school year I participated in many professional developments, content specific and non-content specific. Just about 100% of the time the facilitator reads off some statistical data augmenting a point about learning methodologies or pedagogies that sometimes captured my attention. I feel more often than not, that I am only a learner in this situation, ...
Posted in:
My expectations for the Learning to Research project and the summer institute is to gain knowledge on incorporating Climate Change into a Math Curriculum. Climate Change is a very in depth topic and working in the Globe program previously aligned the topics with the science strands only. We are encouraged to cross-curriculum and it would be great to see how the subject can be incorporated into other areas besides science. It especially helps when we work with other teachers to team teach.
In addition to cross-curriculum, I expect to gain knowledge on how ...
Posted in:
My Hopes for the From Learning to Research Project and Summer Institute Opportunity
Like any other teacher, my most altruistic goal is to participate in a professional development activity that will motivate, educate, and stimulate me into developing a learning activity that will encourage my students to become productive, lifelong learners. I am blessed to teach on a campus rich in nature, only 2miles from Merchant’s Millpond State Park and 20 miles from the Great Dismal Swamp. With ...
Posted in:
This initial blog starts out as a "what I did on my Summer vacation" exercise and ends with what I expect to get out of the on-going GLOBE project.
This institute fits in to my on-going overall annual professional goal: learn something new in Science. A specific goal for this year is to acquire training in order to participate in real time scientific investigations. An added benefit will be to share data with other schools both within my own school system and globally.
I am also looking to gain the confidence and acquire strategies needed to engage my students in authentic Earth ...
Posted in:
Primary Audience:
TEACHERS
I have been a GLOBE teacher since 1999. In the first few years, my school was very active in atmosphere testing as well as hydrology. However, we lost our atmosphere station in Hurricane Katrina, and from that year until this past school year, I did not teach Environmental Science. I returned to teaching Env.Sci. this past school year, and renewed my interest in the GLOBE program. I took a couple of refresher workshops on atmosphere testing and hydrology during the past few months and am ready to get to work!!!
I signed up for the L2R program and summer ...
Posted in:
In one week I will be boarding an airplane on my way to Boulder for the ITEST/GLOBE training program. I am so excited! The schedule promises a plethora of experiences designed to increase my knowledge of climatology, project development skills, research methods, technology exposure, and best practices in all of these areas. I'm looking forward to learning so many new things to help my students learn more. I feel very fortunate to be included in this endeavor, and my school and students will reap many rewards from my work at ITEST/GLOBE.
One of the biggest ...
Posted in:
In one week I will be settling in at the University of Colorado campus in Boulder. News stories and headlines in recent days have been rife with images of the current wildfires so honestly my thoughts about participating in the L2R event have largely centered on the impact of the fires on the Colorado citizens who are coping with this enormous crisis. My prayers go out to them as they work to contain the destruction.
What I would like to get from the conference has several facets. First, I fully believe that as a teacher it is an important exercise to continue to be a student, so ...
Posted in:
The Learning to Research project and summer institute will allow me to make some great contacts for my own professional development and for my students. This will enhance both of our learning experiences about many topics besides climate change. One never knows where meeting such like minded and outstanding teachers will lead.
This project will increase my knowledge about climate change to better educate my students and indirectly the surrounding community.
Lastly, I want to learn as much about the types of technology that can be used in the ...
Posted in:
This is my first blog ever, not just my first blog for L2R. I must confess that I feel like my students must when asked to do something publicly that they are not quite sure they have mastered. It's not an altogether comfortable feeling, really--a little "first day of a new school" plus "what if I fall flat on my face?" In any case, one of my biggest goals for this project is to immerse myself in new-to-me skills so that I can bring them to my classroom. If I don't try things out myself, I am much less likely to ask my students to do it.
I am really quite excited about L2R. My ...
Posted in:
What do I want to get out of the “From Learning to Research project and the summer Institute”?
First I would like to gain more knowledge about tree phenology and apply it to our research on Alaska Climate using bud moisture content of Alaska paper birch buds to predict when bud burst would occur.Then provide an opportunity for my students to present their findings at the 2013 GLOBE conference.
Second, to increase my technology skill level so that I can enhance the student learning experience by allowing the students to use more tools to assist them on their research projects. ...
Posted in:
I'm appreciative of the opportunity to participate in the 2012 L2R project and summer institute. This blog right now is a first for me. I've read blogs quite often but this is my first opportunity to author one. I've often thought a blog could be a great way for me to share information informally with my students. From what I've been able to ascertain, most of my students do not currently follow any blogs or participate in blogging themselves. This will be educational for both myself and my students.
I'm hoping to take advantage of all the great ...
Posted in:
I am very excited to be a part of the L2R cohort, and I believe that this will be a great learning experience for me. I hope to share the information I learn with my fellow science teachers at my school. In addition, I hope to be able to collaborate and brainstorm with other teacher around the USA. Sometimes I forget that other teachers across the country are facing the same challenges that I am, and it would be great to get different perspectives and to share ideas.
By collaborating with other teachers I hope to discover new activities and ways to teach my content. Other teachers ...
Posted in:
These are my thoughts on my first blog entry.
Posted in:
Like most teachers, I am constantly looking for a better way to reach my students and help instill upon them a love (or at least respect) for science. This is no easy task with a bunch of 7th graders who seem to bounce off walls at times, let alone give anything 100% of their attention. I have long aspired to learn how to use a project-based learning (PBL) model in my classroom. I have family members who teach using this model and I have heard nothing but great things in terms of student engagement and achievement. It does, however, require a lot more than ...
Posted in:
Sometimes, part of being a scientist is dealing with the unexpected. During research projects, scientists might get very surprising results. Or, something might happen to completely change the scope of the project. This is exactly what happened to a group of scientists in Chile . Scientists were studying how man-made armoring, such as seawalls, impact the ecology of beaches in Chile and California. They had surveyed 9 beaches in Chile when something very unexpected happened on 27 February 2010– an 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit .
Seawall before and after the earthquake ...
Posted in:
This post is the second in a series called “Trees in Trouble”. To see the first post in this series click here .
Climate impacts so many things on this planet, most notably the types of flora and fauna that live in a specific region. And for those creatures that have annual cycles tied to the local climate, such as the hibernation of bears, migration of birds, and life cycles of insects, a change in climate can shift their way of life and even have subsequent consequences on the environment they live in.
Take the pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) for ...
Many of the world’s glaciers, such as the Exit Glacier in Alaska, United States and Pasterze Glacier in Austria, have lost mass due to melting over the past few years. One such glacier, Exploradores in southern Chile, is also disappearing. This glacier is a sight to behold – a 20 kilometer frozen mass that is filled with cliffs of luminescent blue and indigo ice.
A view from inside the Exploradores Glacier, from Nature
A view from inside the Exploradores Glacier, from Nature
The Exploradores Glacier is one of many glaciers in the Patagonian Ice Fields ...
Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
CLIMATE
CLIMATE CHANGE
Just over four years after my first visit to Australia (From drought to flood down under: Part I), the tides have turned and the country has gone from experiencing the driest decade on record to having the wettest two-year period on record in 2010-2011. These recent rains have been both a blessing and a curse. The good news is that they helped the region of southeastern Australia start to recover from the long drought (see Figure 1). The bad news is that the rains came on heavy and strong. In January 2011, devastating floods occurred across southeastern ...
A fun and easy way to be involved in the Student Climate Research Campaign (SCRC) is by participating in the Climate and Land Cover (CLC) Intensive Observing Period (IOP). This quarterly IOP focuses on documenting and uploading land cover data into the GLOBE database. Scientists are then able to use these data to validate land cover in climate models. Knowing the right type of land cover is important to climate models, because it plays a role in both the energy and hydrologic cycles. For example, land cover plays an important role in how much solar energy is ...
Posted in:
—
20 Items per Page