| Digital Information Helps Students Learn |
How does digital information change our understanding of natural systems?
Digital information technology is constantly changing and discovering new ways to capture data to help us further understand our world.
Previously, new information technologies have often competed with and replaced existing ones. The telephone replaced the telegraph for obvious reasons. Television has relegated radio to a subordinate niche. Digital information technology is different because it is a form of technology that EXTENDS other technologies. Digital information technologies offer value-added features. Electronic documents, for example, can be automatically scaled for different media. The same content can be printed on paper, posted on the World Wide Web, transmitted to handheld computers and cell phone screens with no extra formatting or fuss. Electronic databases—unlike conventional ones—can be searched and queried automatically revealing facts that would be difficult to find otherwise. Finally, digital information technology can extend the technologies by merging them in new and interesting ways. The Web, for example, merges text, numeric data, images, sounds, and video into a seamless medium for posting and sharing content-rich documents.
Indeed the world of information is going digital. The evolution to digital forms of information has
influenced not only the scientific community, but our schools and our homes. These changes have been highly significant, helping to redefine the ways in which we think about and use information to communicate with each other. What was once a simple diagram in a textbook can now be interactive technology found on the web and used by students in school. They can quickly access charts, graphs, photos, and real-time streaming of video of actual examples in the world. Students can directly communicate with the scientific world to learn and apply information.
In Alaska, we may have limits by distance, weather, access, but there are no limits with digital information. Students in Barrow as well as Ketchikan can access real-time digital video of a volcano eruption in the Aleutian Islands. Students in Fairbanks as well as Washington D.C., can access earth's weather, fish migration, tidal fluctuations and other data directly from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via the web. (For additional information on NOAA, please follow this link:
Students can also track weather changes, earth changes and view actual Alaskan topography via the web at Google Earth. What we saw in textbooks years ago, students can actually experience through digital information.
Additional Resources:
Additional Topics Students Can Research
Geology and the Earth's Lithosphere
http://informsciencenetwork.com/geology/facts- lithosphere-4400565a
* Measure plate tectonics and movements of the plates
http://oceanlink.info/SOLE/tectonics/WCDA.html
* Volcanoes visually (satellite) and via infrared photos
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/earth_il.html
* Earthquakes/tsunamis measurement
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/
http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/
Atmosphere, Hydrosphere and Cryosphere
*water and ice movement (cycle)
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclesummary.html
*water/ice temperatures and changes
http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/physical-ocean/temperature/
* ice depth and global warming
http://globalwarming.house.gov/impactzones/arctic
*glaciology - history trapped in ice
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdyegx_irt-season-4-on-history-trapped-on_shortfilms
*glacier mass balance - glacier repeat photography
http://nrmsc.usgs.gov/repeatphoto/
* permafrost and the arctic layer
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/land-permafrost.shtml
Climatological changes
* earth's temperature
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200711_temptracker/
* NASA's earth observatory - seasonal changes
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
* National snow and ice data center - Alaska climate summaries
http://nsidc.org/
I was challenged by the high-tech information information presented in the module. I still find the technology challenging in posting blogs. Interesting how they look so good until they get posted. Must be those virtual fairies that mess things up...
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