Teachers Page Part I:  Search for Ice and Snow

Search for Ice and Snow - Home  |  Teacher Page:  Part II

Good For Grades: 6 - 12
Time Requirements:
Preparation Time: approximately 1/2 hour
Class Time: approximately 2-3 class periods

Student Skills Required:

• Using a Web browser.
• Knowledge of what latitude and longitude is (for older students). This is required for students to be able to pinpoint locations on the Earth map.
• Be able to download and print images (optional)

Goals:

• The most important value of this activity is students learning world geography
• Students meet a challenge that requires use of the Internet for acquiring information, images, or other media.
• Students get the idea that computers are powerful tools not only for games, but for finding out about many subjects on the worldwide web.

Objectives:

1. Students can identify places in the world where there is ice or snow. In the process they become more familiar with world geography. They can use world maps to mark places where they find ice, putting in places names and/or coordinates where possible.
2. Students can express ideas about where there is ice on the Earth
3. Students can find images of Earth on the WWW and download them.
4. Students can determine ways to distinguish areas of ice/snow from clouds or other white features on the images of Earth.
5. Students can use a search engine at certain sites.

Materials Needed:

1. World Maps and atlases--one large world wll map is essential, and as many smaller reference maps as you can gather.
2. Paper and pencils
3. a copy of the online world map for each student
4. a data chart for each student unless you have students create their own charts. See Report Table on "Prepare for Search" page.

Special Features:

• Valuable and practical enhancement of knowledge of world geography
• An online blank map of the world
• Images of Earth from Space Shuttle missions

Strategies for classroom discussion & activities:

Students can find most of the essential challenges for this activity online by accessing the "Ski Earth" pages. You can facilitate as follows:

1. Have the class brainstorm where there is ice on the Earth? (e.g. extreme north and south latitudes as well as high altitudes) Are there seasonal changes?
2. Hand out world maps to the students and ask them to mark on the map places where they find ice, putting in places names and/or coordinates where possible. Start with five guesses.
3. You can either prepare a data table for your students to use and photocopy one per student, or have students create their own tables, using the suggestion online (Report Table on "Prepare for Search" page).
4. If you have only one or two computers to use, you can assign a small group of students to investigate a single Earth Image Data Set and report their findings to the class. Students can access the computers on a time-share basis, i.e. one group at a time.
5. You may need to instruct students in certain browser skills such as
   • Downloading graphics--with Netscape, just "click and hold" on the desired image to get the POP-UP MENU for saving the graphic image to disk.
   • Students may need hints about using search engines. See instructions at the specific sites for more details. Each search engine is different