Joining NAGT
I've added a new organization to my roster of professional affiliations: the National Association of Geoscience Teachers.Joining NAGT has been on my list of things to do for a while -- The Journal of Geoscience Education is the journal that they publish, and I'm told that it's an excellent source of information about how to teach geology well. Teaching geology well is the motivation for my current pursuit of a science education master's degree from Montana State University. For my capstone project, I think I'm going to look at the effect of field trips on geology learning, and I suspect that the Journal of Geoscience Education will have some relevant articles to enlighten my thinking on that topic.
I'm a geologist today because of the wealth of field trips offered by my alma mater, the geology department at the College of William and Mary. I'm convinced that their educational value is positive, but I'm curious to know how positive. It astonishes me that some geology educators don't hold this conviction, but I'm undoubtedly missing something. I'll undoubtedly have more to report on this topic as time goes by.
I'm also psyched about joining NAGT's ranks because they offer a series of grants. Getting small educational grants is my new hobby, so I'm looking forward to making some good stuff happen at NOVA with some sum from NAGT.
The image above shows the distribution of NAGT members (red dots) in the United States in 2006. Google Earth overlay by Jeff Tolhurst, from the NAGT website.
Labels: conferences, field trips, google, msse, teaching
4 Comments:
I definitely agree that field trips are important in the geosciences. The field trips that I went on while I was at NVCC are a big part of why I'm continuing to study the geosciences.
Now that I'm at GMU, I'd say one of the reasons that my semester (Fall 07) of Mineralogy tends to have people who learned more and enjoyed the class more than some of the other semesters is that we did 4 field trips, as opposed to 1. In the geosciences, I personally find making connections between lecture/book, labs, and the field to be crucial for adequate learning; I'll be interested in hearing what you discover as you delve more into this topic.
Welcome, welcome to the NAGT! I hope you will find it to be as interesting and beneficial as I have( just finished a four-year stint as president of the Far West Section). As long as you are learning about the organization, check out the Far West Section publications list in case you ever are field tripping in California or Nevada; we have dozens of geology roadguides available.
Yay! Yes, NAGT is a good organization to be part of. (And when I finish reading the most recent issue of JGE, I'm probably going to blog about it - it's all about programs designed to increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the earth sciences.)
(BTW, have you looked at the SERC.carleton.edu/Cutting Edge website? There's a workshop on teaching intro geology going on this summer. If you got your start at William and Mary, you probably know about the Cutting Edge - Heather MacDonald is one of the driving forces behind it - but if you don't know about it, check it out. Lots of useful stuff.)
And to geotripper, it's good to know about the field trip guides. It's hard to know where to find good ones, and I end up relying on a network of old friends for advice much of the time.
field trips are integral to geology. Where would we be if James Hutton stayed in the lecture hall???
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