Story + Data + Maps --> Student Engagement!
Who doesn’t love a good story?
ArcGIS created an amazing feature (StoryMaps), which sparked the phenomenon of educationally-related stories using real-world data from across the globe.
The awesome educational team at My NASA Data have pulled together an impressive collection of interactive lesson plans using visualizations and authentic, real-world data from NASA satellites and other instruments to address important processes and phenomena in the Earth System.
They cover a wide range of topics from each of the “spheres”: Atmosphere Story Maps
Biosphere Story Maps
Cryosphere Story Maps
Geosphere Story Maps
Hydrosphere
Check back regularly to see there new Story Maps at: https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/basic-page/earth-system-story-map-collections-lesson-plans
They explain their Story Maps as “an immersive means of storytelling by combining rich narrative text with interactive maps and NASA data, along with other multimedia content like images and videos in a 5E Model of the Earth System phenomena that you teach.” This doesn’t do it justice!
Through maps, graphs, animations, and more students can learn about these different disciplinary and interdisciplinary topics in ways we couldn’t have imagined 10 years ago.
These resources combine user-friendly technology with our love of stories and our need to help students make sense of large and small scale processes throughout the earth. The interactive nature and being grounded in real-world data from NASA means that students are able to dive into Exploratory Data Analysis as they learn the concept. They are actively working with the data and making sense of it in real time.
Check out the growing library of hands-on, minds-on Story Maps from My NASA Data and let us (and their team) know how it goes!
