Using the World Wide Web for distributed learning: two examples

This paper details two projects that use the World Wide Web (WWW) for dissemination of curricula that focus on remote sensing. (1) Presenting grade-school students with the concepts used in remote sensing involves educating the teacher and then providing the teacher with lesson plans. In a NASA-sponsored project designed to introduce students in grades 4 through 12 to some of the ideas and terminology used in remote sensing, teachers from local grade schools and middle schools were recruited to write lessons about remote sensing concepts they could use in their classrooms. Twenty-two lessons were produced and placed in seven modules that include: the electromagnetic spectrum, two- and three-dimensional perception, maps and topography, scale, remote sensing, biotic and abiotic concepts, and landscape change. Each lesson includes a section that evaluates what students have learned by doing the exercise. The lessons, instead of being published in a workbook and distributed to a limited number of teachers, have been placed on a WWW server, enabling much broader access to the package. This arrangement also allows for the lessons to be modified after feedback from teachers accessing the package. (2) Two-year colleges serve to teach trade skills, prepare students for enrollment in senior institutions of learning, and more and more, re-train students who have college degrees in new technologies and skills. A NASA-sponsored curriculum development project is producing a curriculum using remote sensing analysis and Earth science applications. The project has three major goals. First, it will implement the use of remote sensing data in a broad range of community college courses. Second it will create curriculum modules and classes that are transportable to other community colleges. Third, the project will be an ongoing source of data and curricular materials to other community colleges. The curriculum will have these course pathways to a certificate; (a) a Science emphasis, (b) an Arts and Letters emphasis, and (c) a Computer Science emphasis. Each pathway includes course work in remote sensing, geographical information systems (GIS), computer science, Earth science, software and technology utilization, and communication. Distribution of products from this project to other two-year colleges will be accomplished using the WWW