Using the Web to Teach Ecology

Workshop #9 - Ecological Society of America Meeting, Madison, WI
Granger Hall, University of Wisconsin, 5 August 2001

Description:

The World Wide Web is a rich source of images, sounds, animations, and text-based information directly useful to ecology professors. Many sites at universities, as well as those sponsored by NSF-LTER, EPA, USGS, and NOAA, also provide access to ecological data for downloading and subsequent analysis. Attendees of this workshop will be introduced to two websites sponsored by the ESA that contain information of direct or potential use to ecology instructors. Attendees will learn how to identify and access ecological data and other pedagogically useful information from the Web, and how to use those sources of information to create interesting student-centered classroom investigations. Attendees will also be encouraged to submit their web-based lessons to the TIEE-WEB site sponsored by the ESA.

Agenda:

Introduce participants to Student-Centered teaching

Provide an overview of resources available on the World Wide Web useful for teaching ecology

Demonstrate one strategy for accessing and converting posted data into a spreadsheet.

• Wilkes-Barre Cemetery Data link
• Instructions for Downloading Data for use in ecology labs.

Familiarize participants with the ESA's TIEE site.

Participant-Centered Activity

• Working in groups, develop a Student-Centered activity, using a web-based resource
• Report activity to group at large

Workshop synthesis and wrap-up