The Earth Scientist

Page 4
The Earth Scientist
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Michelle Harris
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Editor’s Corner
The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) Consortium is pleased to partner
with the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) to develop this special seismology
focused issue of The Earth Scientist. The theme for this issue is Modernizing Your Seismology
Education. Here you will find a collection of five invited articles that showcase the complexity and
wealth of new teaching opportunities that exist within seismology education.
While the place of seismology education in the earth science classroom is well established as an
avenue to address many Nation Science Education Standards, instruction is too frequently limited
to a dated view of seismology. Common activities include a variation on the classic 1960’s-era
earthquake location exercise, plotting of global seismicity on a map to define Earth’s tectonic plates,
and/or the use of a nomogram to determine the Richter magnitude for a local earthquake. While
these exercises are not ineffectual, they do suffer from a number of issues that makes them less
than desirable. For example, seismologists have rarely used the S-P method of earthquake location
since the late 1960’s, and Richter magnitudes have largely been replaced by moment magnitudes. If
seismic data are included as part of these activities for student analysis, they often look hand-drawn
or inauthentic, which inappropriately glosses-over the inherent complexities of the Earth’s interior.
Further, these activities focus on narrow aspects of seismic data (e.g. magnitude and event location)
instead of helping students conceptualize seismic phenomena within a larger plate tectonic framework
or addressing some of the major misconceptions students have about Earth.
To fill the gaps left by commercially available instructional resources the IRIS E&O program is
committed to developing and disseminating teaching materials and teacher-ready products. Such
products are designed to impact a spectrum of learners from students in grades 5 to 16, to educators
and the general public. These translate into powerful learning experiences that transpire in
a variety of educational settings ranging from the excitement and awe of an interactive museum
exhibit hall 1 , to a major public lecture 2 , or the dynamic classroom of a teacher that has participated
in one of IRIS’s professional development workshops 3 . Several such products are featured within
this Modernizing Your Seismology Education issue of The Earth Scientist. Common across all five
articles and the poster insert is the connection to new research that has yet to make it into commercially
available textbooks or curricula.
This issue features a two article sequence that introduces the geological phenomena of Episodic
Tremor and Slip, one of the greatest seismological discoveries in the past decade, and describes
how this phenomenon can be conveyed to students using models and kinesthetic learning. Another
article explores how the USArray, a currently deployed dense network of seismometers, and
resulting data can be leveraged to generate new visualizations to enhance the conceptualization
of seismic waves in the classroom. The fourth article explores the ever-growing literature base of
students’ alternative conceptions of geoscience topics and suggests strategies to use this to inform
your curriculum, instruction and assessment. The final article introduces both new science on
intraplate seismic zones and a physical model that can be used to explore this information with
students. This piece is timely as we reach the bicentennial of the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes.
If you are reading this you have probably already opened and examined the poster we have included
for you! Like the previously mentioned article on seismic waves, this poster also uses USArray
1 http://www.iris.edu/hq/programs/education_and_outreach/museum_displays
2 http://www.iris.edu/hq/programs/education_and_outreach/distinguished_lectureship
3 http://www.iris.edu/hq/programs/education_and_outreach/professional_development
© 2011 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.