Teaching Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – If you haven’t been following my twitter feed (http://twitter.com/meagenpollock), you may not know that I’ve been at the 2011 Cutting Edge Workshop on Teaching Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry (twitter hashtag #sercMPG). Expert educators have gathered to discuss teaching strategies, develop course materials, and exchange ideas about issues in MPG. Fortunately, the Cutting Edge runs several workshops across the geoscience disciplines (look for the updates in September), which have generated an invaluable collection of teaching resources. You’ll be able to find all of the materials from this workshop on the web and we’ll be adding more teaching activities soon after the workshop ends. Here’s a quick (and incomplete) list of resources that I’ve discovered:

• MSA’s Elements Magazine – accessible articles that can be used in class. Don’t forget to check out the April 2007 issue on teaching MPG.
• Raman Spectroscopy Database (Free) – useful tool for those with benchtop Raman systems.
• Monster Milktruck! – a fun and easy way to tour GoogleMaps.
• Virtual Fieldtrip to Vesuvius Volcano – for those whose department budgets don’t allow the real thing.
• EarthChem – a powerful database, complete with plotting tools.
• Hugin – a free panorama photo stitcher with useful applications for Gigapan and Digital Planets on Google Earth.

Please comment here or add to the Cutting Edge collection if you have useful MPG teaching resources!

According to the Cutting Edge: "Core of Ely Greenstone outside Pillsbury Hall, home of the Geology & Geophysics Department at the University of Minnesota. Metamorphosed Archean basalt pillows are visible in the core, which is approximately 2 meters tall. Photo by Sharon Kressler." Aka: What I want for my next birthday!