Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

While this day of recognition (April 21) may be better known in California, Muir's legacy of concern for conservation had a national impact, as is evident from this Sierra Club site. In addition to documents relating to creating the California holiday, teachers will find a John Muir Day study guide in Adobe Acrobat format that outlines Muir's life and the conservation issues for which he fought.

tag(s): conservation (102), earth (184), earth day (60), ecology (103)

This web site from a consortium of several thousand environmental organizations offers a great collection of resources to build awareness of ecological issues and inspire both individual and collective action. These include several games that let students discover how well they and their families conserve resources. Find out how much you know about Earth. Try the Quizzes!

tag(s): earth (184), earth day (60), ecology (103), environment (252)

This one's an oddity. It combines very good, very brief introductory pages on the essentials of geology with very detailed information on geochemistry, exploration, and testing methods. While the basics will work well for high school, or even middle school students, we suspect teachers will find the other content less helpful. Try this one as a reference source for hardness, geologic time periods, and the like.

tag(s): fossils (41), geology (62), minerals (13), rocks (35)

You'll find more than just the bear facts (sorry...) at this site. There are sections about brown, black, polar, and grizzly bears, offering decent writeups on each, along with some very nice photographs. A kids' section offers several well-captioned slide shows about bears and their habits. This is a good example of a site that has effective text and visuals without lots of overboard effects. If bears are in your habitat, this one's a great resource.

tag(s): animals (295)

Presented by a sanctuary in Tennessee, this site describes the sanctuary's efforts to keep aging Asian elephants healthy, and includes information about these animals and their native habitats. There's also a fair amount of fund-raising information, but students will find the factual content interesting.

tag(s): animals (295)

While not all sled dogs are malamutes, the American Kennel Club's page about this breed explains why they are so well suited to life in the Arctic. The information includes both physical descriptions and show standards.

tag(s): alaska (21), animals (295)

The home page for the annual Iditarod sled dog race offers all manner of information on the race, the dogs, and the mushers. There's also information on the Junior Iditarod, and extensive information for teachers and students. This site is useful even during "non-race" seasons.

tag(s): alaska (21), iditarod (4)

Want the weather for Wellington? Will it be balmy in Bombay? This UN weather site has weather information for cities all over the world. As such, it's a ready store of climate data for any unit on weather observations, or even to use as an illustration of variances around the globe. It's nothing fancy, but there's lots of information.

tag(s): weather (160)

This conservationist (and proud of it) site offers lots of detail on the size and fragility of the Alaskan environment and the potential impact of extensive intrusion into that environment. Useful information for any discussion on the management of natural resources, or for background on the state itself.

tag(s): alaska (21), arctic (40), ecosystems (83), oil (22)

The K-12 education section of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution offers a collection of extensive online education tools. Students can search for toxic algae, join one of several expeditions, even learn about women with careers in oceanography. Depending on age level, these exhibits will work for either individual or group use.

tag(s): marine biology (31), oceans (149)

This well-organized site from U.C. Berkeley provides middle and high school students with an introduction to cladistics (a way of organizing living things by common ancestry and evolutionary relationships) and involves students in posing hypotheses about past life based upon evolutionary history. The site was created with support from the National Science Foundation.

tag(s): dinosaurs (43), evolution (89), fossils (41)

Stories From the Fossil Record provides middle school students with a basic understanding of how fossils can be used to interpret the past. There are four different pathways to explore biodiversity, geologic time, paleoecology and past lives. Created by U.C. Berkeley with support from the National Science Foundation, this is an extremely well-organized site.

tag(s): biodiversity (36), diversity (40), evolution (89), fossils (41), paleontology (28)

This extremely well-organized site from U.C. Berkeley introduces students to the history of life and how it results in today's biodiversity. The site includes two different levels for grades K-4 and 5-12, making this an introduction that can be used in virtually any classroom setting. There is a Teacher Guide with lesson plans, handouts, assessments, related activities and much more. Created with support from the National Science Foundation.

tag(s): biodiversity (36), diversity (40), evolution (89), fossils (41)

This site from U.C. Berkeley introduces students to geologic time, the evidence for events in Earth's history, relative and absolute dating techniques, and the significance of the geologic time scale. Suitable for grades 5-10, the site uses animation effectively and is well-organized. Created with support from the National Science Foundation.

tag(s): evolution (89), fossils (41), geologic time (12), logic (161), paleontology (28)

Created at U.C. Berkeley with support from the National Science Foundation, Getting Into the Fossil Record helps students gain a basic understanding of what a fossil is and how a fossil forms. The site is designed for two levels: grades 5-8 or grades 9-12.

tag(s): fossils (41), geology (62), paleontology (28)

This earth science site virtually engages students in scientific research. Middle school students join "science mentors" to gather data and interpret direct and indirect evidence to propose multiple hypotheses of what life was like in Montana 60-70 million years ago. Created at U.C. Berkeley with support from the National Science Foundation, this is an extremely well-organized site.

tag(s): fossils (41), paleontology (28)

This is the online companion to an exhibit currently running at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Download the Ipix plugin to take the virtual tour of the exhibit, check out the live butterfly webcam, or view quicktime movies of butterflies in action. This is a great online excursion for students who don't have their own butterflies to observe. The videos reside on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.

tag(s): butterflies (13), insects (69)

Here's another great site from San Francisco's Exploratorium. Learn how researchers study the jungle, both on-site and in the laboratory. Users with high-speed connections will enjoy the Quicktime movie interviews with the scientists - further proof that science can be engaging, interesting, even fun. A few resources on this site require Flash, most don't, and there is a lot of information here.

tag(s): forests (30), jungles (5)

Here's a venerable site from U.C. Berkeley that offers a simple, graphic illustration of geological time scales and terminology. This one would be useful for an introductory geology course, as part of a fossil study, or to help students understand just how old "old" can be.

tag(s): fossils (41), geology (62), paleontology (28)

This large metasite offers a well-organized collection of scores of links relating to the study and categorization of insects. Like most sites of this nature, there are no explanations of the links, so you may have to hunt to find what you're after. We've included this one because of the number of resources the authors have found.

tag(s): insects (69)