Student Task

Task:

Your job over the next few weeks will be to connect people to the Geologic story of a place. After choosing a place, you will explain the geological history of the area and connect events in the past to the landforms and natural resources that are found there today. You will show how and why the Earth's surface is constantly changing (even though it doesn't seem to be) and predict how the place may look in the future. You will connect with someone related to the place and incorporate their perspective into the story you tell.

What you will create:

Once you understand the story of the place, you will choose how to connect other people to that story. You will choose from the options below or design your own (run your plan past the teacher FIRST). Click on the images to see details.

Whatever you create will be posted, publicly, with the hopes that someone out there will connect to the place that you've researched.

Content Requirements

No matter how you choose to tell your story, it should include the following elements:

• Enough background information for a general audience (remember, your work will be posted online. Make sure a "regular" person can understand it.

• A brief overview how plates move (in general)

• The type of plate boundary (or boundaries) at work in your Place

• A chronological story of how your place was formed paying attention to TIME and SPATIAL scales:

  • When did events happen? How long did they last?

  • Are the events local or wide-ranging?

Content Additions

Don't feel that you need to include all of these, but give your place some FLAVOR by including interesting and relevant parts of the story. In some places (like Hawaii) volcanoes will be a large part of the story. Go with that. Your story might be mostly about volcanoes. In other places, like Iceland, the diverging continents are the star of the show.

The place you will choose is unique and interesting. Get to know it. Dig beneath the surface (ha!) to uncover the story of THAT place and then, tell it.

Ideas for what to search for....

• Relevant human details relating to the story of the place:

  • How has the landform shaped/changed society or culture in that area?

  • What natural resources (oil, gas, metal ores, soils) are important to this area and how did they form?

• Interesting images, stories, video, connections to other places, connections to people --> Anything that helps make your story engaging and will connect people to the place.

Communication Requirements

• Under supervision, you will reach out to someone connected to the place or its story. You find the person, I'll help you connect.

Ideas

• Someone who lives there

• Someone who works or studies there

• Someone who works or studies in a relevant field (for example, if you're place is Hawaii, you could contact a volcanologist)