The goals of OpenSciEd are to ensure any science teacher, anywhere, can …
The goals of OpenSciEd are to ensure any science teacher, anywhere, can access and download freely available, high quality, locally adaptable full-course materials. REMOTE LEARNING GUIDE FOR THIS UNIT NOW AVAILABLE!
This unit on weather, climate, and water cycling is broken into four separate lesson sets. In the first two lesson sets, students explain small-scale storms. In the third and fourth lesson sets, students explain mesoscale weather systems and climate-level patterns of precipitation. Each of these two parts of the unit is grounded in a different anchoring phenomenon.
In this plate tectonics and rock cycling unit, students come to see …
In this plate tectonics and rock cycling unit, students come to see that the Earth is much more active and alive than they have thought before. The unit launches with documentation of a 2015 Himalayan earthquake that shifted Mt. Everest suddenly to the southwest direction. Students read texts, explore earthquake and landform patterns using a data visualization tool, and study GPS data.
This unit is part of the OpenSciEd core instructional materials for middle school.
This unit begins with students experiencing, through text and video, a devastating …
This unit begins with students experiencing, through text and video, a devastating natural event that caused major flooding in coastal towns of Japan. Through this anchoring phenomenon, students think about ways to detect tsunamis, warn people, and reduce damage from the wave. As students design solutions to solve this problem, they begin to wonder about the natural hazard itself: what causes it, where it happens, and how it causes damage.
This unit is part of the OpenSciEd core instructional materials for middle school.
In this 21-day unit, students are introduced to the anchoring phenomenon—a flameless …
In this 21-day unit, students are introduced to the anchoring phenomenon—a flameless heater in a Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) that provides hot food to people by just adding water. Students explore the inside of an MRE flameless heater, then do investigations to collect evidence to support the idea that this heater and another type of flameless heater are undergoing chemical reactions as they get warm. Students have an opportunity to reflect on the engineering design process, defining stakeholders, and refining the criteria and constraints for the design solution.
This unit is part of the OpenSciEd core instructional materials for middle school.
How does changing an ecosystem affect what lives there? This unit on …
How does changing an ecosystem affect what lives there? This unit on ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity begins with students reading headlines that claim that the future of orangutans is in peril and that the purchasing of chocolate may be the cause. Students then examine the ingredients in popular chocolate candies and learn that one of these ingredients--palm oil--is grown on farms near the rainforest where orangutans live. This prompts students to develop initial models to explain how buying candy could impact orangutans.
This unit is part of the OpenSciEd core instructional materials for middle school.
Oh, no! I’ve dropped my phone! Most of us have experienced the …
Oh, no! I’ve dropped my phone! Most of us have experienced the panic of watching our phones slip out of our hands and fall to the floor. We’ve experienced the relief of picking up an undamaged phone and the frustration of the shattered screen. This common experience anchors learning in the Contact Forces unit as students explore a variety of phenomena to figure out, “Why do things sometimes get damaged when they hit each other?”
Student questions about the factors that result in a shattered cell phone screen lead them to investigate what is really happening to any object during a collision. They make their thinking visible with free-body diagrams, mathematical models, and system models to explain the effects of relative forces, mass, speed, and energy in collisions. Students then use what they have learned about collisions to engineer something that will protect a fragile object from damage in a collision. They investigate which materials to use, gather design input from stakeholders to refine the criteria and constraints, develop micro and macro models of how their solution is working, and optimize their solution based on data from investigations. Finally, students apply what they have learned from the investigation and design to a related design problem.
How are we connected to the patterns we see in the sky …
How are we connected to the patterns we see in the sky and space? Students develop models for the Earth-Sun and Earth-Sun-Moon systems that explain some of the patterns in the sky that they have identified, including seasons, eclipses, and lunar phases. They investigate a series of related phenomena motivated by their questions and ideas for investigations.
This unit is part of the OpenSciEd core instructional materials for middle school.
This video features residents of Shishmaref, Alaska, plus environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert …
This video features residents of Shishmaref, Alaska, plus environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert and scientist John Holdren, exploring the human impacts of global climate change.
Students and professionals in science, design and technology have to develop and …
Students and professionals in science, design and technology have to develop and communicate concepts that are often difficult to comprehend for the public, their peers and even themselves.
IMAGE | ABILITY – Visualizing the Unimaginable, will help you enhance your communication and interpersonal skills and provide insight, tips and tricks to make such complex and seemingly unimaginable concepts and ideas imaginable.
After finishing this course you will be more skilled in finding the right visual language to convey your ideas, thoughts and vision. You will be able to illustrate units and quantities, concepts and themes and you will know how to unravel complexity by using diagrams and schemes.
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