TOST FYI: Web Resources
May 2000

One good information resource for Oregon science and mathematics teachers is the OSTA listserv. Posts coming across this list often provide information for teachers pointing to online resources or to meetings or workshops which might benefit teachers. Several of those posts are gathered below. In addition, a potpourri of online mapping resources are highlighted. This page will be available at http://www.canby.com/hemphill/may-fyi.htm until December, 2000.

Naturescaping for Clean Rivers workshops are being offered that offer strategies for preventing pollution in yards as well as by streams, using natural landscapes and watering plans to conserve water. The workshops are offered for free through a variety of sources. You can register for one of the remaining Saturday workshops by contacting Lisa Albert at 503.797.1842 or emailing her at lisa_albert@hotmail.com. The remaining workshops are listed below.
Sat Apr 15
    Concordia University, NE Portland
     (Columbia Slough Watershed)
Sat May 13
    Forest Park Field Headquarters, NW Portland
    (Balch Creek Watershed)
Sat May 20
    St Andrew Community Center, NE Portland
    (Columbia Slough Watershed)

The following information about a Metrogrant-writing workshop offered in June:
WHEN:   June 13, 2000, 1-4PM, Room 270

WHERE:  Metro Regional Center,  600 NE Grand Ave., Portland, OR 97232

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:  Anyone in the Portland/Vancouver Metro area who wants to know about what Metro has to offer you in way of funds and resources for Environmental Education and Habitat Enhancement.

FOCUS:  Learn about the Greenspaces Grants Program and how to write a winning application. Resource people will share how to organize volunteers,
federal compliance information, explain the mysteries of writing a realistic budget. Learn how to build partnerships and make your grant project a success for years to come. Applications and resource materials available at the workshop. Come join us!!

HOW TO REGISTER:  Deadline to register is June 7 at 5pm.  Register by sending your name and phone number to
    Lynn Wilson at Metro wilsonl@metro.dst.or.us

David Stemper, OR-TOSA Program Coordinator, Oregon Forest Resources Institute ((503) 725-5752, dave.stemper@orst.edu) announced the Oregon Teachers on Summer Assignment (OR-TOSA) program, a new teacher education and employment program aimed at providing an in-depth look at forestry, forest practices, and forest products manufacturing. Contact him for more information on this program

National Association of Geoscience Teachers Northwest Sectional Meeting will be held June 22-25, 2000 at the Portland Community College Sylvania Campus. The meeting will include field trips to the Gorge and to Mt. St. Helens. Earth science teachers can take part in an educational session focused on teacher networking. For more current information check the meeting webpage: http://www.csmt.ewu.edu/csmt/geol/thomson/nagt/nagt2000.html.

Salt makes the work go around. Whether as a cause for salt wars or as the spice of your eye. If you are interested in the SALT of the earth, do not miss the resources on salt at http://www.salt.org/il/ . The MRBLOCH SALT ARCHIVE site, presents the "significance, of SALT[NaCl] through the period 1000 BC up to the Industrial Revolution."

In addition to the great resources provided by Rick Kang to TOST, astronomy buffs can check out the Society for Amateur Scientists web page at http://earth.thesphere.com/SAS/. If you click on Science groups, you can link to various SAS groups, including astronomy, earth science, holography, rocketry, etc.

For geology or earth science teachers introducing crystals, the following urls provide a fairly complete introduction to crystal shapes and surfaces, including those of snowflakes!
Natural minerals/crystals
     http://galleries.com/default.htm
Surfaces of crystals
     http://afm1.geology.utoronto.ca/html/body_images_cryst_0.html

This image is from http://snowflakebentley.com/begin.htm

Snow crystals
http://snowflakebentley.com/begin.htm
    http://www.public.asu.edu/~billjay/w.a.bentley.html
    http://www.lpsi.barc.usda.gov/emusnow/
    http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~kgl/gallery.html
    http://metsun4.geophys.hokudai.ac.jp:20080/crystal/gallery.html

If you class studies frogs, an excellent resource is located at the Exploratorium in San Francisco:
This image is from http://www.exploratorium.edu/frogs/index.html .
The site includes links to pages with more information than most people, even teachers, want to know about frogs. The page also leads to resource pages for making rainsticks and to a page with frog sounds...could it be called frog song.

Have you ever wondered about chemicals or substances you use in your classroom. The ToxFAQs: Hazardous Substances Factsheet produced by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is a series of summaries about hazardous substances. The webpage includes an alphabetic index for the chemicals presented. It also has molecular models of some of the chemicals and Links and resources to other online resources: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaq.html.

Topozone: if you use maps in your classroom, check out the maps provided online at http://www.topozone.com. The site contains every USGS 1:100,000, 1:25,000, and 1:24,000 scale map for the entire United States. You simply type in a place name and state in the search box, click "search." Typing in "Portland" and "OR" in the search box brought up one result:
Place County  State Type Elevation USGS Quad Lat  Lon
Portland Multnomah Oregon  town/city  50 feet Portland  45.524ºN 122.675ºW

Clicking on "Portland" brought up a zoomable map of Portland. A powerful tool.

A second geographic resource is http://terraserver.microsoft.com/default.asp from the miscrosoft server. Terraserver includes USGS topographic maps, USGS Topo and Ortho Photo maps, Spin-2 Imagery maps, and USGS and Spin-2 Imagery maps.It also incluseds a location Advanced Find feature AND a link to "Famous Places."
ESRI, Environmental Systems Research Institute, at http://www.esri.com, sponsors online geography-related classes at their virtual campus, http://campus.esri.com/index.cfm?theme=usa. The online campus offers free modules to introduce their geography software AND its business and industry uses. Teachers are entitled to a 40% discount for online classes on the use of ArcView, ArcAnalyst, etc. ArcExplorer is a free viewer for ArcView files, downloaded at http://www.esri.com/software/arcexplorer/aedownload.html.

The Center for Image Processing Education, accessible at http://www.cipe.com , has developed instructional materials that use Image Processing and GIS technologies for teaching about science, math, and technology. They have for-sale teacher resource books of activities, background, lessons for teachers K-14. Free sample lessons are available at http://www.cipe.com/Software/SoftIPLessons.html. Most of their lessons take advantage of the freeware NIHImage and ScionImage for playing with and extracting data from images, whether it is an image of a cell or a flower!

R. Hemphill
May 2000