Ideas for Home Schooling

In these very difficult circumstances, many of you will be working from home and trying to think of ideas for your pupils or for children at home.
Earthlearningidea has a Children's Fun page which may help.

Alternatively, you can find topics by using either the search engine or the alphabetical index. Each activity has a suggested age range (usually on the second page).

European Friendly Rock Network

The European Federation of Geologists’ Panel of Experts on Education

invites you to join the EUROPEAN FRIENDLY ROCK NETWORK.

 The Network is established with the following aims:

1. Raising awareness of young people on nature and interest for geosciences;
2. Increase the schools’ (teachers’/students’) knowledge on the geology and heritage of the region they inhabit;
3. Increase the pedagogical quality of their rock sample collection;
4. Target groups are school students 12-18 years old.

How can I join the network and what am I expected to do?

1. If your school wants to join the network, please fill in an application form. The organisers will inform you about the further details.
2. Collect information on the geology of the region where your school is located by consulting geological surveys, university departments, or museums.
3. Select one or more location(s) from where hand samples can be collected without raising security and/or geoconservation issues.
4. Document the outcrop/location by coordinates, photos and a description, indicate it on a map and draw a geological section if possible.
5. Collect rock samples from the location(s). Document the sample by a short description and photos; indicate the place of the sample on the map.
6. Exchange rock samples with the documentation within the established network of schools in different regions and countries in order to produce thematic geological kits based on rock specimens.

The list of the participating schools from different countries will be provided to the participating schools in order to help the contact and change of rock samples between them.

New Smartphone app - Voyages in Deep Time

Voyages in Deep Time is an exciting project which has developed free smartphone apps to encourage people to visit and enjoy learning about their local rocks and landscapes that tell us what our part of the world was like millions of years ago – in deep time!
The app Voyager deeptime is a game taking  the user on a voyage of discovery and survival in ancient environments. It is aimed at young people (ages 10 – 15 years) but can be fun for everyone.

The app can be used either indoors working through the trail for the site and the way points using the images given in the app, or in the field doing the same thing but with the real rocks in font of you.

Teachers:   FREE teacher training day with subsidised travel being offered on Wednesday 22nd August or Saturday 1st September
To book your place, or to find out more, contact Beth Andrews.
The training days take place in Worcestershire.

The Voyager apps all have a lot of geological information about the whole of the geological timescale - a globe at the side changes the configuration of the continents and shows where we were at the time. At any point on the timescale where you stop, there is more detail about that Period.
In addition to this, for the particular stratigraphy that is relevant to the location on the ground where the app is based upon, there are palaeoenvironmental landscape reconstructions plus 'weather forecasts' and images of the plants and beasties of the time.

DOWNLOAD YOUR APP from Google Play or the AppStore NOW!

Free on-line geology course

Using Earthlearningideas and want to know more?
You could try this free on-line course from the Open University, UK.

2016 International Year of Earth Science Educator Stories

Welcome to 2016, our International Year of Earth Science Educator stories.

The stories of those who influence Earth Science education locally and across the world will appear every Thursday on the IGEO website through 2016 and beyond. Through this, we hope that the work, wisdom, initiative and enthusiasm of the 'storytellers' will inform and inspire the next generation.
So, please:
REGISTER for regular alerts to the stories on the IGEO website by giving your email address on the register page
READ the stories as they appear - and add comments on the IGEO webpage
SEND this message far and wide through all the networks available to you
SUGGEST new contributors by looking through the current list of contributors and letting Chris King know of anybody else who should be sent an invitation to contribute - anyone who feels they have contributed something to Earth science education is invited to submit a 1000 word story, with photos of themselves 'doing something'
OFFER your own story if you too have an inspiring or motivating story to tell, covering any area of Earth science education.
We hope that in this way, 2016 and beyond will be a motivational year for all of us.

Earthlearningidea photo gallery

Some more photos have been added to our photo gallery, sent to us from Catalonia in Spain.
Students have been trying out some of our 'Identifying minerals' activities
'Be a mineral expert 1'
'Be a mineral expert 2'
'Identifying minerals - use your sense(s)!' 

They have also tried making wax volcanoes, 'Volcano in the lab'

And 'Time-line in your own backyard'

To view the ELI Photo gallery, click here.

GIFT workshops to be held in Africa

Bringing together the expertise of the EGU with UNESCO’s Earth Science Education Initiative in Africa and the European Space Agency (ESA), the EGU is proud to announce a new series of annual Geosciences Information for Teachers (GIFT) workshops to be held around the African continent over the next four years.
As international events, the workshops will be held in four different regions of Africa, starting with Southern Africa. They will cover various topics of societal relevance such as climate change, groundwater, geohazards, mineral resources and environmental sustainability.  
The UNESCO-EGU-ESA African GIFT workshops will take place over the course of 3 days with 40 teachers from across the region and 8-10 speakers, half of whom will be non-African experts.
For the past ten years, the EGU’s GIFT workshops – spreading first hand scientific research to teachers of primary and secondary schools – have been hugely successful in shortening the time that research takes to disseminate from scientist to textbook to teacher and offering usable practical activities for the classroom.
The event is open to teachers from across Southern Africa and will be held in Port Elizabeth, South Africa from the 26-28th February 2014.
Click here for more information and how to apply (deadline 9th Dec 2013) Please pass this to those you know who may be interested in this event.

NEW Earth Science activities website

The Earthlearningidea team is pleased to announce the launch of a new, related website - Earth Science Activities and Demonstrations. Mike Tuke's activities and demonstrations provide a thousand and one ideas for teaching Geology: visual aids, demonstrations, short activities, paper exercises and experiments.

Click here for other websites listed on the Earthlearningidea site.

ELIs and 3D Virtual World Tours

Have you tried using ELI activities along with one of the many 3D Virtual World Tours? Many pupils have little concept of, for example, the power of ice or river erosion.

You could try the ELI 'Mighty river in a small gutter' and use one of the 3D tours to accompany it. The photo is from the tour of the Victoria Falls in Africa. There are many other examples you could use:-
- ELI 'Laying down the principles' with the tour of the Grand Canyon, USA,
- ELI 'Grinding and gouging' with the tour of the Matterhorn in Switzerland,
- ELI 'Weathering - rocks breaking up and breaking down' with the tour of Bryce Canyon, USA,
- ELI 'Blow up your own volcano' (or any other of the ELI volcanic activities) with the tour of Grimsvoten volcanic crater in Iceland.
These are just a few of many activities covering a wide range of Earth science and geography ELIs, all stored on our website in pdf format and all free to download.

Amazing technology

Video of a sandbox equipped with a Kinect 3D camera and a projector to project a real-time colored topographic map with contour lines onto the sand surface. The sandbox lets virtual water flow over the surface.
Find out more. 

Perhaps we could use this video to accompany 'Dam burst danger'

UK Geology teaching collection

Geology teaching collection for disposal: a school in Sheffield, England, UK cannot see its way to restarting a geology course, so the excellent teaching collection is now available free to anyone who can demonstrate a need for it, with preference being given to those who are in the early stages of building up a course in a school or 6th Form College.
The collection consists of a wide range of minerals, rocks and fossils, packed into 40 stacking mushroom boxes, a limited amount of equipment, and a range of geological maps, including some multiple copies.
Email to enquire further and to arrange collection.

Geocamp - field activities

GEOCAMP is a website devoted to field activities in Geology. It is a free-access website available for both teachers and students who carry out field exercises as part of their teaching or learning. It is an hypermedia resource in Catalan, Spanish and English, containing original teaching materials and several links with all kinds of topics related to field exercises in the Earth Sciences.
The website includes a desktop publishing tool - the GEOCAMP-EDITOR  - a software application that permits the user to load, from anywhere in the world, the text and figures that build up the description of a point or route of geological interest. Once information is loaded, a document is automatically generated. This document can be accessed as HTML format or downloaded as a PDF to be used as a field guide.

Sedimentary features query

Can anyone identify these please?
Let us know what you think either on 'comments' on this blog or by email.
Please ask if you would like a better image of any of them.

Name that Sample

A few weeks ago we published information about 'Send us your sample' where you can receive free images from a scanning electron microsope of any sample you send. The company has now launched Name that Sample, in which a sample is shown (example above) and the person who guesses what it is wins a brand new netbook computer.

Want to see a specimen with a Scanning Electron Microscope?

'Send us your sample' - you can send your sample and have it scanned by a powerful desktop Scanning Electron Microscope. This service is FREE and the organisers think it is a good way for teachers to take a proactive approach to teaching science. You can send anything - - soil (as in photo), fossil, dead insect, broken iPhone - - - . You can view reports of work the organisers have done here.
Since this campaign was started there has been a lot of interest from professionals, educators and students all around the world.
Recently a video has been posted on YouTube.

More readers' comments

We have just published more readers' comments and suggestions as follows:-
(1) 'The rock cycle in wax' - Earth as a System category
(2) 'Modelling for rocks: what's hidden inside and why?' - Earth Materials and Resources and Environment categories
(3) 'Salt of the Earth' - Earth Energy category
(4) 'From rain to spring' - Resources and Environment category

Earthlearningidea across the world

This map, produced by Google analytics, shows the countries where Earthlearningideas have been viewed. The darker the shading, the more visits to the site. The blog has been visited 6190 times since it began in May last year and we have reached 101 countries.
The activities are available in English and Spanish but are now being translated into Norwegian and Italian. We hope to add more languages in the future.
We are over half-way through our weekly publications now so please keep your comments coming.

Earthlearningideas in Italian

A new work group on Earth Science education has been formed in Italy, as a sub group of the teachers' association (ANISN). The work group is called ANISN-DST. One of the plans of the group is to translate some activities from the Earthlearningidea website into Italian. The plan is that each teacher translates one idea, a university teacher checks the translation, and then the translation is sent to Earthlearningidea for publication on the website. Next school year every teacher will try to use one or more Earthlearningidea activities in school. In September a workshop will be organised where every teacher shows an activity to the others, as a way of involving new teachers in the workgroup.
This is wonderful news; we are delighted - Earthlearningideas in English, Spanish, Norwegian, Italian - - - - which language will be next?

Notes for Mac users

Recent changes to Safari to render .pdf files in the browser may have created a problem with downloaded pdf files having a double file suffix (.pdf.ps). If your downloaded file has this suffix, please rename the file, deleting .ps.
It is possible to receive the pdfs without this problem in other browsers e.g. Firefox. Alternatively it is possible to turn off internal pdf rendering in Safari, reverting to the use of Acrobat reader as before.

We are not experts in this field so would welcome any further comments and suggestions from Mac users. Either comment on this post (click 'comments' below) or email us at info@earthlearningidea.com
We have also added this information in a link from our website

Special Nature Supplement for IYPE

To celebrate the International Year of Planet Earth, this special Nature supplement explores recent developments and future directions in the Earth sciences. With climate change to the fore, Earth scientists have much to offer society, and these articles explore both our understanding of the planet and how this knowledge can be used to benefit the people who live on it.
There is free access to this supplement for the next 6 months.
We were alerted to this publication by the Nuffield Curriculum Centre, part of the Nuffield Foundation.