Projects and Investigations

Webquests, collaborative classroom projects, or web-based units for students to use on their own.

1. Environmental Inquiry (EI): authentic scientific research for high school students
   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
   Date: 2003 Grade(s): 9 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 027644
   This web site, established by Cornell University for grades 9-12, provides an introduction to the Environmental Inquiry (EI) program, in which students design and carry out their own research projects in environmental science. The site is designed to complement the Environmental Inquiry textbook series.
   (For more details, see ENC Record.)
   
   
2. Jet Propulsion Laboratory's education gateway
   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
   Date: 2003 Grade(s): K - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 027635
   This web site provides K-12 students and educators with activities, links, and background information on a range of astronomy topics. The site also includes information on science competitions, research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and links to other NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory web pages.
   (For more details, see ENC Record.)
   
   
3. Offshore windfarms in the United States?
   Featured in ENC Focus  
   Date: 2003 Grade(s): 10 - Post-Sec. Cost: Free ENC#: 028076
   This Internet site, designed for grade 10 and higher, features an interactive activity for students to explore alternative sources of energy. The site challenges students to use their critical thinking skills and the Internet to investigate the benefits and concerns of developing offshore wind power in the United States.
   (For more details, see ENC Record.)
   
   
4. Online science-athon
   Featured in ENC Focus  
   Date: 2003 Grade(s): 1 - 8 Cost: Free ENC#: 027861
   This Internet site encourages students to explore science in their everyday lives through participating in Science-athon interactive activities. The site presents each activity as a challenge and encourages students to use inquiry to investigate the challenge.
   (For more details, see ENC Record.)
   
   
5. MarsQuest online
   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
   Date: 2003 Grade(s): 6 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 028251
   This web site lets users interact with the Martian geography while learning about the red planet and what it takes to plan and launch a mission from Earth. Users learn the major features of Mars through educational games, interactive simulations, challenging puzzles, and narrative descriptions.
   (For more details, see ENC Record.)
   
   
6. Forensics in the classroom
   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
   Date: 2004 Grade(s): 9 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 027436
   This Internet site provides five stand-alone curriculum units for middle and high school students that explore basic chemistry concepts within the context of forensic investigation. The site is the result of a partnership between Court TV, a popular television network that focuses on crime scene investigations, and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
   (For more details, see ENC Record.)
   
   
7. The king of tides
   Featured in ENC Focus  
   Date: 2003 Grade(s): 6 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 028075
   This Internet site presents an interactive activity for students to investigate the relationship between ocean tides and the moon. Students embark on a mission to determine if the moon has an effect on the oceans' tides.
   (For more details, see ENC Record.)
   
   
8. Operation RubyThroat: the hummingbird project
   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
   Date: 2003 Grade(s): 4 - Post-Sec. Cost: Free ENC#: 016772
   This World Wide Web (WWW) site, part of a research initiative of the Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History in York, South Carolina, uses the Ruby Throated Hummingbird as a focal point for a interdisciplinary Internet project. The site, designed primarily for K to 12 teachers and their students in Central America and North America, contains the directions and resources for visitors to register and participate in the project.
   (For more details, see ENC Record.)
   
   
9. Kids as airborne mission scientists (KaAMS)
   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
   Date: 2002 Grade(s): 6 - 8 Cost: Free ENC#: 027639
   This Internet site, developed for middle school teachers, provides units of study that utilize NASA Airborne Remote Sensing (ARS) missions as a context to instruct students about environmental phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, coral reef destruction, and hurricanes. Units are designed to be flexible and to supplement the existing science, math, technology, and geography curricula.
   (For more details, see ENC Record.)
   
   
10. ThinkQuest
    Featured in ENC Focus   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
    Date: 2003 Grade(s): 7 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 012167
    This World Wide Web (WWW) site, developed for grades 7 to 12, presents an international academic competition in which students work in teams of two or three to create Web based educational tools and materials that make learning fun and contagious and take advantage of the strengths of the Internet. Over one million dollars is awarded annually in scholarships and cash to the winning teams and their coaches and schools.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
11. A creative encounter of a numerical kind: a WebQuest for middle grades math students
    Featured in ENC Focus   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
    Date: 2003 Grade(s): 6 - 8 Cost: Free ENC#: 028642
    This Internet site provides an activity designed to help middle grades math students better understand the base ten number system by helping an imaginary civilization develop a base four number system. The activity explores place value, counting, and different number systems as students are asked to create and name a series of original number symbols for their own base four number systems.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
12. PathFinder science
    Featured in ENC Focus   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
    Date: 2002 Grade(s): 5 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 026972
    This Internet site is a portal to all the research projects from the PathFinder Science Collaborative Research program. The program is founded on the national standards and benchmarks that call for students to better understand the process of science by actually doing science.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
13. Field map: a multidisciplinary exploration of nature
    ENC Digital Dozen Site  
    Date: 2003 Grade(s): 9 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 029511
    This Internet site contains guides for five projects that engage students in biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and meteorology. While completing these projects, students gather data on the type of rocks, species of trees, and direction of the prevailing winds in their area.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
14. MathMagic on the web
    ENC Digital Dozen Site  
    Date: 2003 Grade(s): K - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 002482
    This World Wide Web (WWW) site is a K to 12 problem solving project, intended to address most of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) STANDARDS, that involves teams of students discussing math problems via electronic mail or Internet. MathMagic is best suited to schools that use computers with modems and have direct Internet access.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
15. KanGIS: K-12 GIS, Geographic Information Systems community : GIS for schools
    Featured in ENC Focus  
    Date: 2002 Grade(s): K - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 025979
    This Internet site provides resources for using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the classroom. The site highlights teacher training resources and lessons for implementation of GIS in K-12 classes.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
16. WISE, the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment
    Featured in ENC Focus  
    Date: 2001 Grade(s): 4 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 020922
    This World Wide Web (WWW) site features a Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE), supported by the National Science Foundation, where students in grades 4-12 can analyze current scientific controversies using real-world evidence. Besides functioning as an online learning community, WISE is also a research project.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
17. eBird, North America's destination for birding on the web
    ENC Digital Dozen Site  
    Date: 2002 Grade(s): K - Post-Sec. Cost: Free ENC#: 026647
    This web site provides information about bird species, with special emphasis on their distribution and abundance. The site is maintained as a joint project between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
18. Keeping an eye on ozone: creating the context
    ENC Digital Dozen Site  
    Date: 2002 Grade(s): 9 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 025711
    This World Wide Web (WWW) site offers information and research projects that engage students in learning about ground level ozone. As part of the Pathfinder Science Collaborative Research program, students conduct scientific research on real-world topics to understand the process of science.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
19. Rover Ranch: K-12 experiments in robotic software
    ENC Digital Dozen Site  
    Date: 2002 Grade(s): 6 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 025832
    This Internet site, maintained by NASA, is an interactive tool that allows students to design and test their own virtual robots. Students begin their mission by entering the Robots 101 section, a tutorial that provides background information on robotic engineering principles.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)
    
    
20. RoadKill: collision in the wildlife corridors
    Featured in ENC Focus   ENC Digital Dozen Site  
    Date: 2004 Grade(s): 4 - 12 Cost: Free ENC#: 014540
    This World Wide Web(WWW) site is designed to have students monitor and report the number and type of animals that have been killed by motor vehicles along with information about the environmental conditions which may have contributed to the animal's death. The RoadKill Monitoring Project is applicable to students of all abilities and across many disciplines.
    (For more details, see ENC Record.)