Educational Origami

 http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization/index.html

Seeing is believing, well thats how the story goes anyway. However if your are a visual learner then seeing how something works is a key element to your learning. In geography and the geo-sciences this can be hard to do because of the scale and location. However using a computer to visualise or simulate processes and examples is brilliant.

Here are a series of resources from the Free site for visualising Geo-sciences.

Visualization Collections

• Browse our collection of Visualizations on Geoscience Topics. The collection may be searched by specific geoscience topic.
• Other Sites with Extensive Visualization Collections. The following sites maintain large collections of visualizations. The collections span the variety of forms of visualizations including animations, still images, movies, models, and simulations.
• Browse our collection of Geoscience Datasets with Visualizations. This link will take you to a browseable collection of geoscience datasets that include visualizations, searchable by topic.

How to Use Visualizations in Class

• Teaching Activities Using Visualizations: Search our collection of teaching activities that use visualizations. This link will send you to a browse where you can search the collection by topic.
• What Makes an Effective Visualization: If you are using visualizations in class, these guidelines will help you choose the best options.
• Ideas for Teaching with Visualizations: This page incorporates essays, powerpoint presentations and topical resources on using visualizations to explain ideas, explore and understand data, powerful emerging tools, and educational research on visualizations.

 http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization/sites.html

• VPython Visualizations for Earth Science. This site contains computer models and simulations used in Earth Science education and research by Dr. Lensyl Urbano and students at the University of Memphis. All the models are freely available for non-commercial use and most are in platform independent formats.
• Arizona Geology, This web site of Steve Reynolds, geology professor at Arizona State University, contains numerous color photographs, 3D perspectives, and information about the Geology of Arizona, Landscapes of the Southwest, structural geology, science-education reform, and using Bryce5 to illustrate geology.
• Educational Multimedia Visualization Center (EMVC) and Tanya Atwater (more info) , Professor of Geological Sciences at UCSB, work with visiting scholars to animate illustrations of plate tectonics, California tectonic evolution, structure of petroleum reservoirs, oil migration, and microbial activity in sediments.

• Atmospheric Visualization Collection. This collection is based on near real-time visualization of atmospheric data from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) site. (more info)
• GeoWall. GeoWall is a low-cost stereo projection tool that simulates the 3-D nature of various Earth structures and processes. The GeoWall Consortium site provides several earth science visualizations that can be projected with the GeoWall system using Windows, Linux, or Mac platforms. (more info)
• Paleomap Project. 3D movable paleoglobes: interactive 3D virtual globes that the user can manipulate, rotate, and view from any angle. (more info)
• Sediment Transport Movies. A collection of video clips gleaned from numerous researchers. Documents modern depositional processes and deposits in the field and in the lab, as well as experimental stratigraphic modeling at NCED (i.e., ‘Jurassic Tank’). (more info)
• The Magma Foundry. The brainchild of Jimm Myers and Jim McClurg (University of Wyoming) this site hosts a number of useful geoscience visualizations and a collection of power-point presentations describing the use of visualizations in the classroom. (more info)
• USGS Bedform Sedimentology. USGS sedimentologist David M. Rubin uses a numerical model with QuickTime and MPEG movies to illustrate the development of bedforms and cross-bedding under different dynamic conditions. (more info)