Paleonet: Teaching: making paleo relevant

[Martin Farley]

One suggestion is to peruse the set of teaching activities on Paleontology
at the Carleton College SERC website (http://serc.carleton.edu/index.html)
and see if there are some that meet your needs or inspire you to create
your own. There was a workshop specifically on "Teaching Paleontology in
the21st century" about 3.5 years ago. The participants contributed a
wealth of activities on paleo sensu lato (e.g., some are suitable for
courses like Historical Geology).

Some of how I do this is tied to my region (e.g., Quaternary climate
change; sea level on the NC Coastal Plain), and some isn't (e.g., I
created an exercise to show the application of relative geologic time
principles based on investigations of paleoseismology along the San
Andreas fault).

Some of the things I do are for lab only; others, although hands-on "lab"
exercises, I do in lecture. Depending on your class size, you might be
able to do the same.


On Sun, February 3, 2013 2:15 pm, Thomas Hegna wrote:
>
> All,
>   To those of you who teach classes like Historical Geology, History of
> the Earth, and Paleontology: how do you make connections between events
> in the past (both in terms of mechanism and scale) and those we see
> today? I feel like thus far in my teaching I have kept these connections
> too general (sea-level rise, climate change, etc.) and not tied it down
> with meaningful specifics. How do others approach this?
> Best,
> Tom
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> Thomas A. Hegna
>
> http://wiu.academia.edu/ThomasHegna
> ___________________________________
>
> Department of Geology
> Western Illinois University
> Tillman Hall 113
> 1 University Circle
> Macomb, IL 61455
> USA
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Truly yours,

Martin Farley
mbfarley at sigmaxi.net