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Intended for middle school classes, these units work well with the interdicsciplinary theme of "Environments," allowing students to view events and ideas with the perspective of place. Teachers can search for lessons in a variety of ways, including location, time period, or type of student work. A number of different skills can be utilized through the lessons, and primary sources are a focus for many units. Some teachers will be able to take advantage of the resources in their communities and explore these real-life historic places more thoroughly. If your area has no featured lessons, students could always be encouraged to find a local "historic site" to research and visit.

This site looks at global scientific issues and presents articles and links that relate to them. Suitable for MS+ teachers to find resources, but intended for undergraduates to participate. Issues like biodiversity, environment, genomics, biotechnology, and evolution are presented with guiding questions.

Work with GPS can be great because it gets students out in the "real-world." Lessons may focus on animal habits, different earth science features, or the built environment humans have created. Mapping is a great skill to use and develop along with these projects. Most people are familiar with GPS systems in cars, but many mobile phones have this capability as well. There are also special devices dedicated to GPS tracking. This site can help you to explore the possibilities for learning with GPS.

"Discover and apply principles of genetic inheritance by studying the inheritance patterns of fruit flies in a virtual environment. You will work on a virtual lab bench from which you can order fruit fly mutants from a web merchant, mate the flies in an incubator, anesthetize flies for observation, examine flies under a microscope, and analyze the data from offspring to determine patterns of inheritance. Your task is to propose hypotheses, design experiments, and analyze and interpret the data from these experiments."

In this game, you get to visit China. As you explore the environment, you can interact with everything around just by clicking. You can engage in conversation, completing tasks, or try on different jobs. All of the work involves repetition with words and sentences in pinyin. You can also see the character writing and English translations, and you are always able to tailor the amount of support you need. In addition you can hear audio (native Chinese speakers!) for single words, complete sentences and entire conversations. There is a space where you can record yourself saying the same words and listen to both recordings to see if your pronunciation is improving. Along the way there are tips on grammar & syntax to help you recognize things like the difference between addressing someone formally or informally. The places you can visit and the encounters you have also give a taste of Chines culture. You can learn about money at the bank in the airport. Across the street from your hotel in Beijing there is a center where they talk about calligraphy and Chinese literature. Overall, the software addresses how to speak in many very practical situations. There is a ledger for your money and energy so you have to be active in the game to earn more. It is fun and makes you want to explore. I really think middle school would be best for this, but the content on some of the literature was in a pretty high range. This could be worked through as assignments or individually paced.

"For Students, GLOBE provides the opportunity to: collect scientific data on their local environment focused on the atmosphere, water, soil, and land cover share their data with others via the Internet publish the results from their research projects create maps and graphs of GLOBE data on the GLOBE web site collaborate with other GLOBE students and scientists around the world"

David Warlick's new InfoGraphic-a-Day is a great way to help kids (and adults) understand how data can be formatted and analyzed. The site's organization with specific subjects and some interdisciplinary themes like Health works well with a 21st century approach. Students also can work on developing skills related to understanding all of the content that is available and creating and sharing their own work. Conveniently, Warlick has included a section just for data sources - although teachers and students could certainly seek out their own. If you like this site, you might like to check out his Blogroll too - I liked the DailyInfographic.com because I thought its Glogster-like posters looked like a great idea for a student project - with models already created. Check out this one about technology and the environment to see! http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/earth-day-internet-infographic.png

One of Jane McGonigal's games -this is an alternate reality game where students have the opportunity to think and communicate about what a world without oil would be like. The original game occurred in 2007 with over 1500 participants engaging and responding. However, students can still use the game. Lesson plans for teachers are available through the Learn About link. Teachers may choose to go through the whole series of ten lessons or use just one.