The Tower Shoals Chenier, part of the accumulation of trillions of shells at the mouth of the Colorado River Note that this image is an interactive Gigapan panorama. Use your mouse and the controls in the upper right corner of the image to view fullscreen, and to pan and zoom. View this Gigapan on its own page here to see additional features.
Why are there trillions of shells in the Colorado River delta?
Why does the Colorado River delta look the way it does?
Using Virtual Fieldwork Experiences in the classroom
• Goals and Objectives
• General Objectives for VFEs
• VFEs across the curriculum
• Using VFEs to foster rich discussion
Preview the VFE and consider what you will focus upon
The Colorado River Delta Virtual Fieldwork Experience
• Objectives specific to the Colorado River VFE
• Background
Continuing Inquiry
• Questions to guide field inquiry
• Productive field inquiry raises new questions
• A photograph is a dataset
• How to look at a specimen
• Consider the most important takeaways
Using Virtual Fieldwork as a catalyst for actual fieldwork
This page is written in a way that is intended to serve an array of users. The most obvious audiences are teachers and students, but we hope that it serves anyone who wants to unearth the story of a place. Readers may engage in that exploration alone or together. In many field trip settings, whether virtual field trips like this one, or at an actual field site, teachers or field trip leaders point things out. That can be interesting, educational, and fun, but the learning is likely to be more durable if the learner figures things out. Ideally, in working together, teachers will act as collaborators with students, and will work to figure things out together.
We also hope that sharing strategies for teaching and learning with the learners, as we are doing here, will help learners to be more metacognitive. Metacognitive learners are learners who actively learn how they learn, and work to manage and improve their learning processes.
These hopes represent one set of goals for learning and instruction. More traditional objectives are included in the next section and goals and objectives directly related to The Next Generation Science Standards are found here.
There are objectives relevant to any Virtual Fieldwork Environment (VFE):
Interpret the environment represented within the VFE you are investigating, including descriptions of why the landscape looks the way it does, and how it has changed over time.
Compare and contrast the environment represented in the VFE with the users' local environment.
Create a VFE representing your local environment or a field site you have visited and present it to interested others.
Individual VFEs will include additional objectives that are specific to the environmental setting or content addressed within the VFE, and users (educators and students) may identify further objectives. A fundamental goal of learning in the geosciences is to be able to answer the question, “Why does this place look the way it does?” where “this place” is wherever you happened to be, or whatever location you happen to be studying. The question leads to a sort of “who done it?” – a mystery, or set of interlocking mysteries, to be solved. Unearthing these mysteries is rarely a simple task. A landscape is always the result of the interplay of many different processes, often over very long periods of time. There is never, or almost never, one single process that explains why a particular landscape is the way that it is.
Nearly every unit in an Earth or environmental science course, and most of the units in a biology course, play out in some meaningful way in most environments, including the one outside your classroom door. The table below lists units in typical Earth science and biology curricula. Look through the list and consider how each unit influences the landscape where you live and the landscape or landscapes you will explore through virtual fieldwork.
| Units in a typical Earth science course: | Units in a typical biology course: |
|---|---|
| • Introduction: Size, Shape, and Composition of Earth | • Introduction: Unity and Diversity among living things |
| • Mapping | • Maintenance in living things |
| • Rocks and Minerals | • Human Physiology |
| • Weathering, Erosion, Deposition, and Landforms | • Reproduction and Development |
| • Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics | • Transmission of traits from generation to generation |
| • Earth History & Paleontology | • Evolution (Note: Evolution is both a crosscutting theme and a unit.) |
| • Meteorology and Climate | • Ecology |
| • Astronomy |
It’s all there – each and every one of these curriculum units is happening outside your classroom door, outside the door of your home, and wherever your field site happens to be. Fieldwork, whether real or virtual, can be used to deepen understandings for any and all of these topics.1
While it is all there, there is also ambiguity. Doing fieldwork, whether virtual or actual, has substantial important differences from doing traditional schoolwork. We think that's a good thing. Reading the lay of the land, answering the question of why a place looks the way it does is complex work that both develops and requires the understandings of content from multiple disciplines and - at least as importantly - understanding the meaning of the connections amongst those disciplinary ideas. In other words, doing fieldwork is more like doing life than it is like doing schoolwork.
Much of what we do in school simplifies the seemingly complex. That is important to do much of the time, but it is also important to complexify the seemingly simple - to dig into the complex nature of how our world works. Fieldwork, whether real or virtual, provides excellent opportunities for studying the interplay of different Earth systems and processes. As you explore your field site, consider the connections amongst the processes of life, rock formation, and the nature of weather and climate. Then consider connections to other areas of science, and to disciplines beyond science.
We found the Ambitious Science Teaching Project's Discourse Primer for Science Teachers four high-level goals for talk resonate with our goals for the kind of conversations that VFEs should foster. These goals are shown below.
• Eliciting students’ initial scientific hypotheses in order to plan for further instruction. The goal of this discourse is to draw out students’ understandings of a phenomenon (e.g. a bicycle rusting in the backyard) that is related to an important scientific idea (in this case chemical change or conservation of mass). After the lesson we analyze students’ ways of talking about it in order to adapt upcoming learning experiences.
• Making sense of data/information. The goal here is to help students recognize patterns in data, critique the quality of data, and to propose why these patterns exist. What, for example, is going on at the unobservable level that explains our observations?
• Connecting activities with big scientific ideas. The goal of this practice is to combine data-collection activities with readings and conversation in order to advance students’ understanding of a broader natural phenomenon. This conversation is different from the previous one, in that students are not trying to explain the outcome of an activity, but to relate the activity to a bigger science idea or puzzle that the unit is framed around.
• Pressing students for evidence-based explanations. This discourse is designed to happen near the end of a unit, but elements of this conversation can also happen any time the teacher is trying to get students to talk about evidence. The goal of this discourse is to assist students in using multiple forms of evidence, gathered during a unit, to construct comprehensive explanations for a phenomenon that has been the focus of the unit.
From: A Discourse Primer for Science Teachers (p. 7). Available here.
Consider these goals as you explore and investigate your field sites - both the virtual one represented here, and any site local to your home or school. While they are labeled here as goals for talk, they reflect goals for the kind of thinking teachers, students, and other learners should engage in as they deepen their understandings of scientific ideas.
Given that most or all of the units within a course play out in nearly every terrestrial environment, fieldwork, whether real or virtual, can be a part of instruction in any unit. We suggest that you give attention to fieldwork in multiple units throughout your course, and draw comparisons between your local environment and the environments you visit virtually. Use fieldwork at the beginning of a course to establish the purpose of your investigations; interweave fieldwork throughout the course to highlight topics within each unit; and use fieldwork as a capstone to tie the course content together. Fieldwork may be used for any or all of these purposes, and it may make sense to choose one initial focus, especially if you have not led students in fieldwork previously. Remember that field scientists may visit the sites they research hundreds of times over their careers and continue to deepen their understandings with each visit.
Most VFEs that we’ve developed are customizable to teacher and student needs. Google Earth or Prezi files can be edited to allow focus on a particular feature in the landscape, or students may be directed to focus on specific topic. Generally, they also allow topics and questions to be investigated at different depths.
Explain generally the influence of moving water in a variety of environments upon the deposition of sedimentary particles;
- Describe how changes in moving water over short and long time scales can influence erosion, deposition, and environments;
- Define chenier and explain specifically how cheniers form, including description of how the processes of erosion and deposition contribute to chenier formation;
Describe several ways human activities have changed the Colorado River Delta over the last century.
Propose policy initiatives to appropriately protect, restore, or, if appropriate, leave be, the Colorado River Delta ecosystem and explain the rationale for these initiatives drawing from the available evidence.
Teachers should specify the number of activities required to satisfy the second objective and the level of detail required in the third to suit their curricular needs. See also the general objectives for VFEs.
On the map the Delta was bisected by the river, but in fact the river was nowhere and everywhere, for he could not decide which of the hundred green lagoons offered the most pleasant and least speedy path to the Gulf. So he traveled them all, and so did we. He divided and rejoined, he twisted and turned, he meandered in awesome jungles, he all but ran in circles, he dallied with lovely groves, he got lost and was glad of it, and so were we. For the last word in procrastination, go travel with a river reluctant to lose his freedom in the sea.
Aldo Leopold in his essay The Green Lagoons2
Aldo Leopold was reflecting on his 1922 visit to the Colorado River Delta. In this Virtual Fieldwork Experience (VFE), you'll see that the delta is vastly different today. Of course, the VFE won't literally take you down the river to investigate it in the same way that Leopold did, you'll be able to explore the same place. It's not only different because this is a virtual trip and Leopold was there in person, but also because freshwater no longer reaches the sea in most years. The Colorado River Delta remains even though the Colorado River itself is usually no longer there.
Investigate how this has changed the delta's ecosystem. Consider how the extended drought facing the watershed will impact the river and its delta. Explore the mouth of Colorado. Explore how it has changed over time, and learn the story of how it came to be the way that it is. Why does the river no longer reach the sea? How else has the delta changed over the last century?
This region still can be described as a scientific ‘blank spot’ on the map of North America, deserving much more study to inform those who make decisions about its future.
Glenn et al., 2001
Use the VFE to learn about a special feature of the delta - sandy or shelly beach ridge called cheniers. Use the information provided here both to learn about coastal processes and to think about what special features are in your local environment and how you might represent that in a VFE about a site local to your school.
Explore the mystery of the cheniers' formation. Just as at a crime scene, there are no banners or pop-ups proclaiming what is and is not a clue. It's up to you to determine what is relevant and what is not.
The VFE does more than illustrate the story of cheniers. It highlights a range of geologic and biologic processes and raises questions about the interplay of different Earth systems. While helping to teach about the Earth system at the Mouth of the Colorado, it also serves as a model for sharing with others information about an ecosystem and the Earth system processes that influence that ecosystem.
The VFE is in a Prezi that is "Public and Reusable." Thus, users can make their own copies, and, if a particular lesson focuses on only a piece (or only pieces) of the total VFE, it can be customized to meet teacher needs. You can access it directly here.
Consider the special features of your environment. What makes where you live unusual? How might you capture those features in a VFE so you can share it with others?
"Why does this place look the way it does?" is the driving question for our work and we've developed series of questions that support the driving question. One series focuses upon the rock at a site, and the stories that can be read in the rock. Another set of questions focuses on the underlying geoscience, and a third addresses environmental science and ecology. All of them are framed so that they can be productively investigated at any site.
Click here for a worksheet that includes the questions focused on the rock. The geoscience and environmental science question lists are more detailed series of questions are available as part of a packet with a series of checklists for preparing for field work. Content from that packet was expanded into a chapter, "Real and Virtual Fieldwork," from the Teacher-Friendly Guide to the Geoscience of the United States.
These checklist questions are also embedded within the Prezi above, with slight customization for the special features of the site. A worksheet with questions specific to the Colorado River Delta is here.
While these question sets include attention to human impacts, we hope to develop another set of questions (in partnership with social science educators) that draws focus on the role of human activities in shaping the environment. Most of the places we go have been profoundly shaped by human activity, and we invite you to give this serious consideration in your field work.
Virtual fieldwork offers the opportunity to explore an area without leaving the classroom, and it allows multiple “visits” to a site. “Why does this place look the way it does?” is a bottomless question, meaning that it can be productively investigated for a very, very long time. Field scientists, be they professionals or fifth graders, will never fully answer this driving question absolutely or at every scale. Many of the supporting questions also have a bottomless quality.
These big questions can be used to drive discussion and investigation, and they can be used in graded assignments. The teacher can define the level of detail students are expected to use in graded work. Many of these questions can serve as catalysts for research papers or projects, but they can also be meaningfully answered in a concise paragraph.
Most of our VFEs are built around sets of imagery, some of which is interactive. Consider what you see as a dataset - or at least as a set of data, as "dataset" often refers to specific kinds of computer files. A photograph can contain a tremendous amount of data and also help to place other data into context, especially if the photograph is of very high resolution.
Isla Montague (small chenier). Note that this image is an interactive Gigapan panorama. Use your mouse and the controls in the upper right corner of the image to view fullscreen, and to pan and zoom. View this Gigapan on its own page here to see additional features.
Consider and discuss what kinds of data can be included in a photograph taken in the field, and discuss how photographs can help provide context for other kinds of data. What can be interpreted about the nature of a place by interpreting photographs of that place? What kinds of information are easy to capture with a photograph? What kinds of data are more challenging to capture this way? As you look at different VFEs, ask yourself, "What do I wish the authors had taken pictures of?" And, "How could the photographs better capture aspects of the site, to help us understand why the place looks the way it does?" Use these questions to help you think about what to do when you create a VFE of your own.
Instruments can extend and sharpen our senses. Your sense of sight, of course, is not the only sense used in interpreting a field site. See The Teacher-Friendly Guide to the Earth Science of the United States' chapter, "Real & Virtual Fieldwork" for more on using instruments to extend the senses.
Most of our VFEs provide the opportunity to take a close look at at least a few rocks, fossils or biological specimens. That may not sound all that interesting, but any of these can tell a story, if you know how to read it. How to Look at a Rock provides a good basic overview of how to begin to read that story. While the description is focused upon rocks, many of the ideas apply to a broad range of types of specimens.
The article begins by stressing the importance of context. Knowing where a rock, fossil, or biological specimen was originally found is tremendously helpful. A specimen's location data gives you information about its story. The loss of this data makes a specimen much, much less valuable from a research perspective, like a paragraph out of novel, without the surrounding story, without the surrounding context, the specimen in isolation makes little sense.
When you collect specimens in the field, therefore, labelling them is profoundly important. Bag your specimen and insert a label like the one below. Click the caption to download labels to print, or make your own.
A specimen label. Click here to download labels that print six to a page.
From field investigation, you can learn a lot about the story of a place - how a landscape came to be the way that it is. This is, of course, deepened by other kinds of research, both in the lab and in the library. We do think learning the story of a place is important, but for most learners, the details of how plate tectonics and climate shaped a particular environment are not the most important understandings, or the understandings that we hope will prove most durable.
By durable understandings, we mean big ideas that the learner will remember and understand for years after instruction. We have carefully crafted a set of Earth Science Bigger Ideas and Overarching Questions and we hope students and teachers will revisit them and consider their connections to their investigations. The Overarching Questions, "How do we know what we know?" and, "How does what we know inform our decision making?" are as important as the Bigger Ideas themselves.
Engaging in fieldwork (and the research in the lab and library to support that fieldwork) helps us to understand how scientific stories are unearthed. To understand how scientific stories are unearthed is at least as important as understanding those scientific stories themselves.
The VFEs we have created help tell the stories of the places they represent. While they can, to some degree, stand in the place of actual fieldwork, that is not their primary intention. When you visit a Virtual Fieldwork Environment, consider how the place you are studying compares with your local environment and other environments you have studied. How are the environments similar and how do they differ? Consider too how you can make a VFE of your local environment that you can share with others to teach them about where you live (or the field sites you visit).
1 Human physiology is a bit different than the rest of the units as it focuses on a single species.
2 The essay, included in Leopold's classic A Sand County Almanac, is short, engaging, and gives a good sense of what we've lost. If time allows, reading this is recommended before exploring the VFE.