The widespread occurrence of flooding and the fact that both precipitation data and river flow data are readily available for many locations provides an excellent opportunity for educators to bring relevant professionally collected data into their teaching. By connecting those data to the use of models, students can collect, interpret, and…

The expansion of research data availability and production has highlighted the need for proper training in data stewardship. Recent years have seen both incentivized and mandated research data management plans enacted by institutions and funding agencies as a way of supporting more open and integrated data-intensive research. Despite the…

How do scientists generate and weight candidate queries for hypothesis testing, and how does learning from observations or experimental data impact query selection? Field sciences offer a compelling context to ask these questions because query selection and adaptation involves consideration of the spatiotemporal arrangement of data, and therefore…

This article is a presentation of a three-day sequence of lessons that engaged fifth-grade students in an exploration following the activities of scientists. From asking questions and analyzing data, to engaging in scientific modeling, to defending their theories to the scientific (classroom) community, these fifth graders were mirroring how…

Finding Earth science data has been a challenging problem given both the quantity of data available and the heterogeneity of the data across a wide variety of domains. Current search engines in most geospatial data portals tend to induce end users to focus on one single data attribute. This approach largely fails to take account of users' multiple…

The emergence of digital tools, including tablets with a multitude of built-in sensors, allows gathering many geological observations digitally and in a geo-referenced context. This is particularly important in the polar environments where (1) limited time is available at each outcrop due to harsh weather conditions, and (2) outcrops are rarely…

The characteristics of the inner layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, are determinant for Earth's life. In this experience we explore the first hundreds of meters using a smartphone mounted on a quadcopter. Both the altitude and the pressure are obtained using the smartphone's sensors. We complement these measures with data collected from the…

The abundance of freely available, scientific big data sets can facilitate discovery-based authentic science projects saving time, money, and effort. This is especially true of remotely sensed data, as there is global coverage of Earth's surface spanning several decades that can be used for a multitude of applications. In this article, I present…

Research conducted at scientifically significant sites produces an abundance of important and highly valuable data. Yet, though sites are logical points for coordinating the curation of these data, their unique needs have been under supported. Previous studies have shown that two principal stakeholder groups -- scientific researchers and local…

In the last decade, commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become more accessible for use in civil roles such as scientific research. Despite their increasing use in research, there has been little investigation of their potential use as an educational tool in Geoscience. This small-scale mixed methods research investigated the potential…

Micrometeorites originate from small pieces of rock from space colliding with the Earth's atmosphere at high velocity, such as the Perseid meteors which hit the atmosphere at 60 km/s. When they do so, they burn up, causing a flash of light that we see as a meteor. Many groups have been successful collecting these particles using various devices.…

National Geography Standard 1 requires that students learn:"How to use maps and other geographic representations, geospatial technologies, and spatial thinking to understand and communicate information" (Heffron and Downs 2012). These concepts have real-world applicability. For example, elevation contour maps are common in many…

Data and data analysis are central to science and the complex world in which people live. Students need to practice working with data--addressed in the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013)--starting with small, self-collected data sets and moving on to larger, remotely collected data assemblages. Small data sets…

In response to calls for research into effective instruction in the Earth and space sciences, and to identify directions for future research, this systematic review of the literature explores research into instructional approaches designed to facilitate conceptual change. In total, 52 studies were identified and analyzed. Analysis focused on the…

Field courses are essential for subjects like Earth Sciences, Geography and Ecology. In these topics, GIS is used to manage and analyse spatial data, and offers quantitative methods that are beneficial for fieldwork. This paper presents changes made to a first-year Earth Sciences field course in the French Alps, where new GIS methods were…