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On 11 March the biggest earthquake on record to hit Japan caused widespread destruction across the country. A 10-metre (33-ft) high tsunami, triggered by the tremor, swept inland in many places swamping everything in its path. Photo and caption courtesy of BBC News
I am still glued to the media outlets as the crisis in Japan unfolds. An earthquake, a tsunami, the nuclear meltdown threats, and the many losses Japan is enduring. I started to create a folder for our Global Portfolio on all three of these topics – earthquakes, nuclear power, and tsunamis to help with current lessons on these topics, but alas – I couldn’t.
Not becuase we don’t have the resources. I found many great interactive sites that explained earthquakes and tsunamis. I found a wonderful website from the UK Science Museum about how nuclear power plants generate electricity. Many videos, articles on the topics. I even found results for Japanese culture to understand this nation.
And I just got word that even more resources were added. Our content editors are careful at finding websites from trustworthy sources, such as PBS, NASA, and USGS, and careful not to include sites that allow comments. (Comments can really detract from a great resource with ugliness – which is a great shame.) To find these resources, click on the high school tab and the keywords are: Honshu Japan earthquake 2011, Japan earthquake and tsunami 2011, Japanese earthquake and tsunami 2011, Tohoku earthquake. There are some also found in elementary and middle school, just not as many.
I turned to the Current Events Widget – one of my favorites drill down widgets. There I was able to find great links to trustworthy news sources. I liked that. The news was not in my face, scaring me with a nuclear meltdown as I’m trying to work with my students. Instead, I could could find the articles I wanted them to read, and possibly use to create their own newspaper or blog entry.
My problem was, what should be the end result? Should I include a project that the students are going to work on? Or is it just a folder with some great links? I could come up with many project ideas using cartoon sites, Glogster EDU, Kerpoof, Wixie, and even LetterPOP. My problem was that none of them felt right. At least to me.
netTrekker definitely has the resources you need to teach current events. Our content editors work hard to find reliable, trustworthy sites on hot topics, and get them added to netTrekker in a timely manner. As I work on creating this global folder that has the links to these very topics, I wonder, what do your lesson plans look like? Should I just make it a folder of resources and not worry on a complete lesson?
Tagged Content, earthquake, netTrekker, resources, tsunami