Instructify

BY REBECCAH HAINES

Earthquakes are such dramatic events that students seem intrinsically motivated to learn about them — especially if their learning is inquiry-based and hands-on. In a classroom setting, it is somewhat difficult to create an inquiry and hands-on experience involving earthquakes — just imagine the mess! Luckily, the internet saves us once again at Virtual Courseware: Earthquake.  Here, you and your students can learn about earthquakes without triggering mass destruction.

Essentially, this website provides the learner with “an inquiry-based activity that helps a user learn about the concepts of how seismic waves are used to locate an earthquake’s epicenter and determine its magnitude on the Richter Scale.” In order to achieve this goal, the student completes two activities in which they create virtual earthquakes and measure the seismic waves created. Students manipulate various tools, create graphs, collect data, then interpret those graphs and data.

Additionally, if you register your class (for free) your students can take a quiz at the end so that you can ensure the learning objectives were met. Pretty nice deal! Another pretty awesome deal is that you can switch the language of the entire site to Spanish — something that could be helpful with your English language learners.

This website provides an interesting (and non-destructive) way for students to create and gather data on earthquakes. It is somewhat advanced, so I would recommend it for high school students. If you teach earth science, or you if you have earthquakes somewhere in your curriculum, I would definitely check this out.

Virtual Courseware: Earthquake

Related stuff

Free lesson planning from the Red Cross for disaster preparation