Water What-ifs
One Sky, Many Voices
Estuary-Net Project
WhaleNet NASA's Quest Project The Albatross Project
EnviroNet at Simmons
College Roadkill
Project Biological Timing Online Science
Experiment Classroom
BirdWatch The JASON Project The GLOBE Program SC Butterfly
Project
http://www.ncsu.edu/sciencejunction/depot/experiments/water/
Water What-ifs is a Web site for encouraging inquiry investigations of water quality in North Carolina and
Delaware. Students engage in water quality testing to monitor specific parameters in local sources of
water. Data is collected and analyzed to compare the ecological health of different bodies of water in these
two states.
http://onesky.engin.umich.edu/
The mission of the One Sky, Many Voices Project is to create innovative, inquiry-based K-12 weather
curricula that utilize current technologies such as CD-ROMs and the World Wide Web for the interactive
study of current weather and air quality. Students, teachers, parents, and scientists can participate from
classrooms, homes, or other educational settings. Four-week and eight-week programs centered around
environmental science themes are featured at this Web site. Programs run during set time periods so that
individuals worldwide can coordinate their learning with many other participants.
http://inlet.geol.sc.edu/estnet.html
Estuary-Net is an excellent Web site for teachers to use guided inquiry learning activities in their
classroom. Estuary-Net was developed by the National Estuarine Research Reserve System in response to
water quality issues arising in coastal areas. This project strives to develop collaborations among high
schools, community volunteer water quality monitoring groups, local officials, state Coastal Zone
Management (CZM) programs, and National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERRS) to solve non-point source
pollution problems in estuaries and their watersheds. This Web site provides comprehensive information
about characteristics of estuaries, estuarine ecology, water quality monitoring; and quality assurance,
quality control, and standard operating procedures of a water quality monitoring program.
This Web site provides many classroom activities from the Estuary-Net curriculum. The classroom
activities are divided into three levels in order to provide various degrees of involvement in the subject,
ranging from lab experiments to single field experiences to long-term monitoring. The benefit of this
scaffolding is that schools which do not have easy access to watershed areas can still participate in the
Estuary-Net activities by engaging in hands-on/minds-on laboratory activities. All Estuary-Net activities
contain objectives, assessments, time needed, materials, procedures, and hypotheses.
http://whale.wheelock.edu
WhaleNet is a collaborative project of the biology departments at Wheelock College and Simmons College in
Boston, Massachusetts. It is an educational site devoted to whales, whale research, the marine habitat and
environmental studies. Students are encouraged to use telecommunications tools to ask researchers questions
online in the "Ask a scientist" area. The Satellite Tagging Observation Program (STOP) electronically
tracks whales to study their movements and migrations. STOP includes data, observations, and
satellite tracking maps. Teachers are able to download a variety of tracking maps for use in their
classrooms. Curricular lesson plans are included to guide the study of the range of whale movement during
their migrations.
WhaleNet also contains an area of curricular activities which provide ideas on how to use the WhaleNet data
and information for a variety of topics including navigation, water testing, plankton tow and analysis, data
collection, photo identification of whales, bathymetry, topographic models of the ocean bottom marine
pollution and data analysis.
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/
This project, which is also called Sharing NASA, allows students to share in the excitement of NASA's
authentic scientific and engineering pursuits such as flying the shuttle and International Space Station,
exploring distant planets with amazing spacecraft, and aeronautics/airplane research. In these projects,
students engage in scientific content and process with NASA scientists. Discourse is facilitated with online
chats, e-mail Q&A, and live audio/video programs.
http://www.wfu.edu/albatross/
This project uses sensitive satellites in space, miniature transmitters on birds, and rapid e-mail
communications to investigate the travels of albatross on the open ocean.
http://earth.simmons.edu/
EnvironNet contains many scientific monitoring projects in which students can participate. All projects
involve hands-on science activities that include data analysis and synthesis.
http://earth.simmons.edu/roadkill/roadkill.html
The Roadkill Project is designed to involve students and teachers with scientific monitoring and
telecommunications and to increase participant awareness of the motor vehicle hazards for wildlife. This site
is guaranteed to bring about stimulating discussion in your classroom.
http://www.cbt.virginia.edu/Olh/
Using the Internet, you can participate in a real science experiment conducted at the Center for Biological
Timing. View live images and actual experiment results, analyze real-time data, form hypotheses, suggest
variables for new experiments, and share conclusions with other scientists from all over the world. Two
experiments, one designed for middle school students and one for K-4 students, are provided.
http://birdsource.cornell.edu/cfw/
The Classroom BirdWatch program enhances student observation skills, supports core science content, supports
process skills objectives, promotes creativity, and lends itself to student inquiry opportunities. Students
collect bird data and can access an interactive bird research database. Students publish their findings, ideas
and, artwork in a national newsletter called Classroom Birdscope.
http://www.jasonproject.org/
The JASON Project uses telecommunications technologies called telepresence to transport millions of
students to the expedition research sites live via satellite. Telepresence allows students at Primary
Interactive Network Sites (PINS) throughout the United States, Bermuda, the United Kingdom, and Mexico to
watch the expedition live, interact with scientists, and control live-feed video cameras. Video, audio, and
data signals originate from the simultaneous live broadcasts. The broadcasts are then downlinked to the
primary sites, all in less than half a second. A multi-disciplinary curriculum is distributed to all JASON
Project-participating teachers early in the school year to ensure that students are well-versed in the scientific
principles they'll encounter during the live broadcasts. As part of the
curriculum, students are encouraged to perform a variety of local field investigations using the same
scientific methods employed by scientists at the expedition sites.
http://www.globe.gov/
The GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) Program is a world-wide network
of students, teachers, and scientists engaged in a tele-collaboration project to do meaningful real life
science. In the GLOBE Program, students make environmental observations and report their data findings on
the Internet. Scientists use the students' data to formulate atmospheric models and provide feedback to
the students. The measurements conducted by the students include air temperature, cloud observations,
precipitation, surface water temperature and pH, soil moisture, biometrics, land cover assessment, and
species identification. Students also share findings and communicate with other students using e-mail from
the web site. GLOBE includes excellent descriptions of equipment and procedures for data acquisition and a
user-friendly searchable data archive. The unique aspect of the GLOBE Program is that students are
interactive partners with scientists.
http://butterfly.clemson.edu/
This project tracks butterflies with student-gathered data in South Carolina.