John C. Butler Department of Geosciences
Many universities are considering how best to meet the challenges of changing student characteristics (older students, more females, and increasing numbers of underrepresented students) and changing fiscal climate (insufficient funding to sustain existing initiatives and develop new ones). Many are exploring the potential of Internet-based resources as an element in both synchronous courses (everyone in the same place at the same time) and asynchronous courses (where members of the class could be in many different places at different times). Simply using the Internet to broadcast course content (where information flow is primarily from the instructor to the class) fails to take advantage of its distributed nature. Perhaps the greatest contribution of "new technologies" will be a rethinking of what is required for learning to occur. The Internet itself is the best resource for finding how these resources are being incorporated into formal courses. Approximately half of the Geosciences Departments in the United States and Canada have Internet home pages. More than 200 geosciences courses, produced by more than 70 of these academic departments have Internet-based home pages. An increasing number of field trips, course exercises, tours, reference materials, poster sessions, and student projects are appearing which can be incorporated into new courses.
An Electronic Epiphany
In the summer of 1994 the University of Houston completed a massive project which provided a new telecommunications system for the campus and brought Internet access (via ethernet) to all offices and classrooms. Initial explorations with e-mail, gopher and world wide web services produced in the author a sense of intrigue as to the potential of these services in the geosciences and lead to an agreement to edit a special issue of Computers & Geosciences (Butler, 1995) which focused on Internet resources in general and geology and geophysics in particular.
I have taught freshman physical geology more than 20 times during the past 30 years and preparation had been reduced to reviewing class notes, selecting ever-present new slides (supplied by publishers), and duplicating home work exercises. A survey printed in the Houston Chronicle (summer, 1995) reported that about 25% of the residences in Harris County, Texas had a home computer and about half had internet access. This apparent interest of the local area in home computing and the Internet, coupled with Internet access via the campus computer clusters, heightened my interests in exploring the utility of Internet resources as an integral part of a formal course (Butler, 1996). What started out as a few exercises on the World Wide Web -- an introduction to search engines and a virtual field trip to Volcano World (volcano.und.nodak.edu/vw.html) -- rapidly evolved to a more comprehensive undertaking. (Physical Geology, University of Houston, www.nsm.uh.edu/aphysicalgeology.html). Course notes, images, links to pertinent background materials, case studies and virtual field trips were developed or located for each section of the course in an amazingly (in retrospect) short period of time. For the first time in a long time I had revised the course and found it a challenging and enjoyable experience. In developing these materials, my initial thought was to use them in the same way as I had been using home work and reading assignments.
Positive benefits were evident after using Internet-based course resources for one semester. The availability of the syllabus, homework exercises, and lecture materials on the Internet drastically reduced the number of pages that the department copied for in-class distribution. However, the saving of trees was insignificant, as many students reported that they always printed materials at least once and were not yet prepared to give up a hard copy (and, most likely, their yellow markers for underlining). In fact, most of the students used the terminals in our library to access the materials and quickly learned that the library administration had not figured out how to charge for the copies made on the laser printers! A positive side feature reported was that the students learned about other library electronic services while waiting for a terminal. Approximately 1/3 of the class (15 out of 44) reported that they really did not like to read, whether the material was on the Internet or in the text. This, strongly indicates that they had not experimented with the linking features built in to the course resources on the Web. The remainder of the class were more positive than neutral and numerous conversations convinced me that students felt value had been added to the course.
An interesting and unexpected consequence of my development of Internet-based resources began to unfold. Comments such as "now that you have this material ready to go, why not offer this as a distance education course?" began to be asked by our Distance Education unit. I told myself that I had not produced a course that could be distributed asynchronously; I had simply taken advantage of a new technology. I realize now that my attitude reflected an underlying concern about my role as an instructor. If students at the University of Mars could read the same text and web-based materials, follow the same links, complete the same exercises and do as well as my room-bound class, what role was I playing in the educational process (Butler, 1996)?
In summary, the experiment was judged to have been moderately successful. Questions related to the role that the instructor should play, however, were raised which could only be answered by learning more about learning in general and how to take advantage of the potential of the Internet in particular.
This paper is a modified (primarly shortened) version of a manuscript that will appear in the Distance Education/ Asychronous Learning special issue of Computers & Geosciences in mid-1997. The focus in this modified version is on the extent to which the Internet is being used in Geosciences Departments in the United States and Canada as a medium for distributing course materials as well as courses.
Involvement of Geosciences Departments with the Internet and WWW
The World Lecture Hall (www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/index.html) provides a compendium of courses that were submitted by their producers. In June, 1996, seven courses were listed under Earth Science and eight under Geology. Chemistry and Physics, for example, list 30 and 27 respectively. Although the World Lecture Hall provides a good entree for the instructor who wants a "one stop shopping center", the self-nomination aspect argues that one cannot extrapolate from the numbers of courses listed by discipline and come up with a sense of the extent to which the Internet is being used as a distribution mechanism.
The American Geological Institute's Directory of Geosciences Departments (33rd Edition, 1994-95) lists 769 U.S. and Canadian four year degree granting departments. The United States and Canadian Geosciences Departments WWW Directory (maintained by V.J. Ansfield at www.sdgs.usd.edu/esci/geodepts.htm) lists 356 U.S. and Canadian Geosciences Departments with WWW home pages (June, 1996); approximately 48% of the total number of the four year degree granting departments. The frequency of updating was estimated by looking for a statement or date indicating when the page was last updated. Approximately half of these pages are static; that is, more than 9 months has passed since the page was updated. This may be a harsh measure as not all departments may follow a convention for indicating when changes were last made. Other pages are truly dynamic and there is a sense of evolution about the pages and their contents.
A survey conducted by the author in August, 1995, found 45 geosciences courses with Internet home pages. In February of 1996 there were 130 course home pages contributed by 60 departments. The most recent survey (June, 1996) identified 75 departments contributing 209 course pages.
The first survey was conducted using a list of American Universities (www.clas.ufl.edu/CLAS/american-universities.html) and several search engines. It quickly became apparent that search engines locate a great volume of material when key words such as "physical geology", "igneous petrology", and "sedimentation" were input. In June, 1996, for example, Webcrawler (webcrawler.com/) located 761 documents with "physical AND geology" and most of these were from university and college course bulletins. The words "physical AND geology AND online" identified 176 documents; more than 75% were from course descriptions and only a small percentage (less than 15%) of the known courses were actually found by searching. The second and third surveys were more tedious as they involved checking all geoscience departments listed in Ansfield's directory (www.sdgs.usd.edu/esci/geodepts.htm). Clearly, some courses may have been missed (especially those that are referenced only from an individualÕs personal home page) although most departments with course home pages provide links at the highest level. Plots of the number of departments and total courses versus time are given in Figure 1 where August, 1995 is month 1.
Figure 1: Number of departments and total courses with Internet-based resources.
No attempt was made to identify the author(s) of the course home pages, but it was noted frequently that the same individual was responsible for more than one page at his/her university. For example, the two contributions from the University of Houston and the three from Dekalb represent one individual per department. Regardless, a relatively small number of faculty appear to be responsible for pages now published on WWW. Although only three surveys have been completed in about a years time, (Figure 2) the growth rate is slightly greater for courses than for departments as the same individuals develop WWW resources for several of the courses that they teach. A plot of the ratio of courses per department versus time(Figure 2) is approaching 3 courses per department as compared with about 2 courses per department a year ago.
Figure 2 : Courses with Internet-based resources per department.
Geosciences Resources On The Internet
In constructing a master list of geosciences resources -- The Virtual Geoscience Professor (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anonfieldtrips.html) -- it was decided to include only those courses that were more than non-interactive repositories of outlines, suggestions, and assignments. Although these are useful for the class participants, they are probably of limited utility to others. A wide range exists in of level of development in courses listed. Titles printed in bold on the home page are for those courses that, in the author's opinion, are nearly "complete"; that is, they include a combination of lecture material as well as links to related resources. Many of these courses are evolving. All errors of omission and/or commission in listings are entirely the responsibility of the author!
During the relatively short time that this list has been published, it became apparent that a number of links may disappear when courses are not being offered or when they are being revised. Contacting the author/producer is a must if one wants to incorporate some of these resources into new material. A side benefit is that correspondence for permission to link and an estimate of the stability of the resource has lead the author into several worthwhile e-mail exchanges and an ever expanding resource space.
Geoscience Courses By Subject Matter
The Virtual Geosciences Professor Home Page is divided into a number of lists. ANON Courses by Title page (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anoncoursessub.html) is arranged alphabetically by course title, and by university or college offering the courses. This is probably what most users will want initially. The arrangement is somewhat arbitrary. For example, the remote sensing/GIS courses could have been listed separately instead of being included with space geology courses. A summary by category is given in Table 1. Approximately half of these courses were designed for first year courses -- most of the environmental and oceanography and essentially all of the physical, national parks, and historical geology courses.
| Topic | # Departments | # Courses |
|---|---|---|
| Economic Geology | 2 | 5 |
| Environmental Geology | 19 | 28 |
| Geochemistry | 4 | 5 |
| Geology of the National Parks | 2 | 2 |
| Geology and the Internet | 5 | 5 |
| Hydrogeology | 2 | 4 |
| Geophysics | 8 | 11 |
| Glacial Geology | 4 | 5 |
| HistoricalGeology | 14 | 14 |
| Mathematical Geology | 7 | 8 |
| Mineralogy | 6 | 8 |
| Oceanography | 15 | 16 |
| Paleontology | 9 | 10 |
| Petrology | 10 | 14 |
| Physical Geology/Earth Science | 41 | 50 |
| Sedimentation and Stratigraphy | 3 | 4 |
| Space Geology/Remote Sensing | 6 | 8 |
| Structural Geology | 11 | 12 |
Geoscience Courses By Department
Courses by Department (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anoncourses.html) is arranged alphabetically by University or College offering Internet-based, course related resources in the Geosciences. This material is presented as "one long string" in contrast to the first list which is broken up by course title into smaller files. A total of 30 states and four provinces are represented. [The University of Bristol was included because the author was quite familiar with the work of Professor Paul Browning but no systematic attempt has been made to expand the work to other countries.] California and New York are represented by 27 (10 departments) and 22 (8 departments) course pages respectively. The distribution of departments (Table 2) by number of courses with Internet home pages has a mean of 2.78, a median of 2, and a mode of 1 course per department.
| Number of Courses | Number of Departments |
|---|---|
| 1 | 23 |
| 2 | 16 |
| 3 | 15 |
| 4 | 5 |
| 5 | 5 |
| 6 | 2 |
| 7 | 1 |
| 8 | 1 |
| 9 | 2 |
| 10 | 1 |
The University of British Columbia is represented by 10 individual home pages, representing a department commitment to using the Internet as a means to enhance the visual nature of many geosciences courses. The UBC Geological Sciences Department "Innovation Fund project"addresses this issue of visual experiential learning by developing an alternative, directed learning environment via an Internet connection, (M. Lamberson, www.cc.ubc.ca/ccandc/may-june95/geoweb.html. The project consists of two integrated components:
In every department the decision to produce a www course page is left up to the individual and only at the University of British Columbia is this evolving into a departmental objective. In fact, at UBC at least one individual (post-doctoral) has been hired full-time to help faculty develop course materials. A wide range of responses to the question of who "does most of the work" in producing course pages -- faculty, students, or staff -- was received. Most departments had at least one "point person" with an interest in the technology for its own sake who served as a "role model" and that person usually had produced Internet-based course resources for several courses.
In about half of the departments (8) the content role was filled by faculty with graduate students providing the technical skills to produce the html or PDF files. Several noted that this was a somewhat precarious position because students (at least many of them) graduate and leave the department. The overriding objective, however, was to get something on the Internet. In four departments there were staff who were being trained to produce html documents; two departments reported that this was not very satisfactory -- old dogs and new tricks? One chair reported that the department was investing its own funds to hire a full-time "multimedia expert" for 6 months. All of the "books" on preparing Internet-resources warn the reader that creation of material is just the first part of the job and that maintaining the resources is a potentially bigger job. However, it appears that many units will need some short-term infusion of support in order to increase the current level of involvement. If the unit wants to be involved then a 6 month position is better than nothing and, if the "experiment"is successful, the success itself may be sufficient to secure a more permanent solution. Given the financial climate on many campuses and organizations, a request for the dedication of a full-time position to a relatively small unit may be the quickest way to insure that the request will be denied.
Between 5 and 15% of the faculty in the responding departments are actively involved in at least the content preparation aspect of developing Internet-based courses and the predictions are for a moderate growth rate.
Eight of the units included an exclamation mark as part of their response to the "is the effort worth it" question. All departments reported that Internet-based course resources were worth the effort and some went into considerable about future plans.
Course Resources (http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anon_resources.html) are more or less standalone contributions which could be used in one or more courses. This is definitely an area which can be expanded by each user and potentially is the most useful in preparing geosciences materials. Terry Acomb, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati created the Geologist's Lifetime Field List (www.uc.edu/~acombty/geologylist.html). While not a field trip per se, the page accomplishes several purposes. It is convenient set of links to many superb images of geologic interest and it provides a starting point for class projects. Several of the geology courses referenced above offer "extra credit" to students who locate "new resources" and the results of the project could be displayed as an Internet-resource with Acomb's framework as a guide or template.
These course resources can be divided into: 1) virtual poster sessions; 2) interactive resources; 3) Internet-based exercises; 4) reference materials; 5) student projects; and 6) tours.
A Mathematical Model for Extinction (www.lassp.cornell.edu/newmme/science/extinction.html) and Chemical Recycling in Island Arcs (www-ep.es.llnl.gov/www-ep/igpp/arcs.html) are good examples of "virtual poster sessions" as both are focused exposes which would make good assignments for upper level courses in paleontology and plate tectonics respectively. Another Node On the interNet (ANON) -- the home page for the readers of Computers & Geosciences (www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anon.html) recently started a project which commissions "virtual poster sessions". Quantitative Stratigraphy by F. Agterberg and F. Gradstein (www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anonposters.html) is the first of a series which will feature contributions from noted geoscientists.
Another category of resources are interactive resources or "geo-gadgets" which give the user some element of control over the output. Make Your Own Seismogram from the UC Berkeley Seismographic Station ( quake.geo.berkeley.edu/bdsn/make_seismogram.html), The Web Accessible Diffractometer (149.164.187.226/xrd/maindiff.html), and the Plate Motion Calculator (manbow.ori.u-tokyo.ac.jp/tamaki-html/plate_motion.html) can be used as the basis for Internet-based exercises.
Paul Browning's Virtual Field Trip Through The Oman Ophiolite (www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Geol/vft/oman.html) provides a good example of designing an Internet-based exercise with a field trip setting. Students are asked to sketch (based on previous course work) a cross section through an ophiolite showing both rock types and structures. The class, working in small groups, is asked to spend an hour studying a series of 26 images and placing each in its likely structural position using the prepared cross-section as the frame of reference. The instructor can assess what the students know by evaluating the cross-section. Students are encouraged to work collaboratively in placing the images in the proper structural position. The instructor can assess learning in the course by evaluating the student's completed cross-section and there are ample opportunities for feedback within student groups and with the instructor.
The Mount St. Helens Blast Zone Recovery (athena.wednet.edu/curric/land/sthelen/index.html) site is a self-contained exercise produced by the Athena Project. "Athena is a three year collaboration between Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) in the state of Washington, and the local school districts of Seattle, Bellevue, Northshore, and Lake Washington. NASA funds Athena as part of its Public Use Of Earth And Space Science Data Over The Internet project. The Athena Cooperative Agreement began on 7 September 1994. Athena is developing curricular and resource material using geophysical and other data sets acquired via Internet and preparing this curricular and resource material to form part of the presently developing science, math, and technology curricula" (athena.wednet.edu/project/index.html). Cooperatives such as Athena would appear to be primary producers of Internet-based course resources in the future. Students are given instructions for using NIH Image, a sophisticated image processing application, and asked to arrange five images in order from oldest to youngest by measuring thee area covered by material ejected during the eruption.
The Earth Space Research Group at the University of California at Santa Barbara has produced two self-contained Internet-based exercises which make excellent assignments for students.
Other resources are compendia of good reference material. Minerals Under the Microscope (www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Geol/opmin/mins.html#menu), from the University of Bristol offers a good introduction to Optical Mineralogy and links to other Internet-based resources. The Petrographic Workshop at UCLA (pong.pslc.ucla.edu:80/pet/pet_intro.html) contains several thin section views of more than 60 common rock forming minerals along with their optical characteristics. If this resource were combined with a search engine the user would have the ability to enter measured properties and obtain a list of "best fits". The Image Gallery (www.science.ubc.ca/~geol202/s/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi) contains a fairly large set of images (several hundred) with an accompanying search engine for locating images of geologic interest from the University of British Columbia. The Illustrated Glossary of Geologic Terms from Iowa State University (www.public.iastate.edu/~geology_100/glossary.html) is a useful link for introductory geoscience course materials. The "trick" is to get students to "click" when they encounter a term that they do not understand. Clicking should be easier than turning to the glossary at the end of the text but experience suggests otherwise. Students who do not enjoy reading and understanding will probably treat Internet-based material in the same way they treat hard copy; that is, they will ignore the resource unless the instructor finds some "hook".
As noted previously, the Internet offers the instructor an opportunity to broaden assignments designed to assess learning (Pickering, 1995). The Hooper Virtual Paleontological Museum at Carleton in Ontario (superior.carleton.ca/~tpatters/Museum/hvpmdoor.html) consists of 12 virtual museum displays prepared by Tim Patterson's junior level class in Evolutionary Paleoecology . The mandate of the museum will be to provide an on-line paleontological resource for educators and the general public both in Canada and abroad.
The last category of resources can be termed "good tours" on the Internet. Paleontology Without Walls (ucmp1.berkeley.edu/exhibits.html) is an "internet classic" (more than 2 years old!) and is an ideal introduction to geologic time in physical, historical and environmental geology courses. The Nine Planets multimedia tour of the solar system (www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/) and Views of the Solar System(128.165.1.1/solarsys/homepage.htm) are image-rich resources which appear to be heavily used. These can be used as "chapters" or picked apart to form stand-alone units. If you are claustrophobic and want to avoid damp, dark, tight spaces visit the Virtual Cave (www.goodearth.com/virtcave.html). Or, explore the relationships between Plate Tectonics and Earthquakes (www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/plate-tectonics.html).
Field trips (www.nsm.uh.edu/anontrips.html) are becoming an relatively large component of geoscience information on the Internet. This version is in the form of a simple table and future versions will make use of a clickable geographic map or geologic column as a frame of reference.
Hurst (1995) noted that one of the more difficult tasks in teaching subjects like geology and biology, which entail learning a great deal of nomenclature and descriptive material, is providing students with a framework for the information. Faculty in colleges of business administration and education have a long history of using case studies in their disciplines to provide both a frame of reference as well as an opportunity to have the class work with " real data and real problems. Geologists have long used a king of case study, the field trip, to educate both students and professionals. Trips to diverse geological settings over the course of a geologists career provide breadth of experience and depth of understanding. Geology requires a life-long apprenticeship whereby students and professional alike learn by observing and working with other geologists having greater experience and different areas of expertise. Much of the value of a field trip lies in the integration of data taken at a variety of scales and locations. For these reasons the field trip is an apt metaphor for geologic case studies" (Hurst, 1995, 5.1).
Internet-based field trips cover the spectrum from a few images taken on a class field trip with minimum accompanying text such as the Smith College Mt. Holyoke Trip (geology.smith.edu:80/GeoNet/MtHolyoke.html). Students often play a role in the production of these types of resources. Groups can be assigned to take photographs on the trip and then get together afterwards to select those which best illustrate important aspects of the trip. Selected photographs can be scanned and the rudimentary html document prepared by different student groups. With time, such seemingly primitive resources can evolve by the addition of information gleaned from the literature.
At the other end of the spectrum are trips with extensive compilations of text, maps, images, and chemical analyses and the trip to Ascension Island (geowww.gcn.uoknor.edu/www/ascension/ai.htm) is an excellent example of a self-contained field trip complete with pertinent references to the literature.
Jurassic Park Reef (www.uni-stuttgart.de:81/UNIuser/igps/edu/JRP/) offers links to a variety of resources (paleoecology, global change, paleontology, and oceanography) related to reefs. It would not take a great deal of effort to construct several Internet-based class exercises using this site as a primary resource.
Mohawk Valley Fossils (zircon.geology.union.edu/Gildner/stack.html) offers more than a field trip. "The purpose of this is to examine the sediments deposited that were deposited during the Middle to Late Ordovician Period in the ocean that was then at the present site of the Mohawk River Valley of New York . Here we focus on the interrelationship between the tectonic events of the time, how they influenced the sediments being deposited, and how both influenced the life in the sea at that time. It is the result of these influences that allows us to unravel the geologic history of the area. We will look at the distribution of the sediments left behind, and the fossils they contain. We will also look at what we understand about the tectonic activity of the region" . A number of questions are provided which provide a focus without detracting from the content.
The Internet itself provides an abundance of geoscience-related material that can be used by instructors in constructing Internet-based course resources. In addition to more than 200 geology courses with home pages produced by more than 70 universities in the United States and Canada, resources are focusing on field trips, course exercises, reference materials, student projects and tours. The ANON -- Virtual Geoscience Professor home page (www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anonfieldtrips.html) provides a link to these and other Internet-based resources. The production of Internet-based resources is a relatively easy and straight forward task. Incorporation of these resources into a course, on the other hand, requires an analysis of what the instructor is attempting to accomplish. If these resources are used in a broadcast mode of instruction in which information flows from the instructor to the class (no matter where the members of the class are) then a bad option will have been selected. If, however, the instructor takes advantage of the inherent distributed nature of the Internet and constructs an environment in which what is used and how it is used can be structured by the learners aided by instructors then everybody wins. Is the Internet "deja vu all over again"? Numerous technologies have been touted in the past as a "missing link". A student of mine drew a cartoon (ca 1975) showing the "classroom of the future". A large reel-to-reel tape recorder was at the podium and at each unoccupied desk was a miniature tape recorder. Many of these technologies (slides, movies, tapes, television, etc.) were viewed as extensions of the teacher and ideally suited for a broadcast mode of operation. The Internet, on the other hand, with its distributed nature, seems better suited to attaining Illich's (1970) goals -- IF the instructor is prepared to do so.
American Geological Institutes Directory of Geosciences Departments, 1994-95 (33rd Edition, The American Geological Institute, 195 p.
American Universities : http://www.clas.ufl.edu/CLAS/american-universities.html
ANON --Course Resources: http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anon_resources.html
ANON -- Courses by Title: http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anoncoursessub.html
ANON -- Courses by University: http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anoncourses.html
ANON --Field Trips: http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anontrips.html
ANON -- The Virtual Geoscience Professor: http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anonfieldtrips.html
Ascension Island: http://geowww.gcn.uoknor.edu/www/ascension/ai.htm
Butler, J.C., 1995, ed., Special internet issue: Computers & Geosciences, v. 21, no, 6, p. 791- 798.
Butler, J.C., 1996, On the care and the feeding of moles, Campus Wide Information Systems, in press.
Chemical Recycling in Island Arcs: http://www-ep.es.llnl.gov/www-ep/igpp/arcs.html
Determining Algebraic Relationships Graphically http://www.imsa.edu/edu/geophysics/atmosphere/energy/powerhelp.html
Geology 202, Introduction to Petrology: http://www.science.ubc.ca/~geol202/s/geol.html
Geologist's Lifetime Field List, T. Acomb: http://www.uc.edu/~acombty/geologylist.html
Geology 202, Introduction to Petrology: http://www.science.ubc.ca/~geol202/s/geol.html
El Nino: http://www.crseo.ucsb.edu/geos/el_nino.html
Hooper Virtual Paleontological Museum, Carleton, Ontario: http://superior.carleton.ca/~tpatters/Museum/hvpmdoor.html
Hurst, S., 1995, An integrated, computer-assisted approach to teaching introductory geology laboratories: AGU Macintosh Computer Applications for Geoscience Education, Short Course Notes, December, 1995, San Francisco, p. Hurst 5.1 - 5.8.
llich, I., 1970, Deschooling Society, Chapter 7, Calder and Boyars
Illustrated Glossary of Geologic Terms, Iowa State University: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~geology_100/glossary.html
Image Gallery: http://www.science.ubc.ca/~geol202/s/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi
Indian Ocean Monsoon: http://www.crseo.ucsb.edu/IOM2/Begin_IOM_scenario.html
Introduction to Geophysical Exploration, Colorado School of Mines: http://magma.Mines.EDU/fs_home/tboyd/GP311/introgp.html
Jurassic Park Reef: http://www.uni-stuttgart.de:81/UNIuser/igps/edu/JRP/
Make Your Own Seismogram, UC Berkeley Seismographic Station: http://quake.geo.berkeley.edu/bdsn/make_seismogram.html
Mathematical Model for Extinction: http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/newmme/science/extinction.html
Minerals Under the Microscope: http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Geol/opmin/mins.html#menu
Mohawk Valley Fossils: http://zircon.geology.union.edu/Gildner/stack.html
Mount St. Helens Blast Zone Recovery: http://athena.wednet.edu/curric/land/sthelen/index.html
Nine Planets, multimedia tour of the solar system: http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/
Paleontology Without Walls: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibit/exhibits.html
Petrographic Workshop, UCLA: http://pong.pslc.ucla.edu:80/pet/pet_intro.html
Physical Geology, University of Houston: http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/physical/physical.html
Plate Motion Calculator: http://manbow.ori.u-tokyo.ac.jp/tamaki-html/plate_motion.html
Plate Tectonics and Earthquake: http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/plate-tectonics.html
Principles and Applications of Remote Sensing, IMSA: http://www.imsa.edu/edu/geophysics/atmosphere/energy/remote.html
Quantitative Stratigraphy, Agterberg and Gradstein: http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/anonposters.html
Smith College Mt. Holyoke Trip: http://geology.smith.edu:80/GeoNet/MtHolyoke.html
United States and Canadian Geosciences Departments WWW Directory, V.J. Ansfield: http://www.sdgs.usd.edu/esci/geodepts.htm)
UBC Geological Sciences Department Innovation Fund, M. Lamberson: http://www.cc.ubc.ca/ccandc/may-june95/geoweb.html
Views of the Solar System: http://128.165.1.1/solarsys/homepage.htm
Virtual Cave:http://www.goodearth.com/virtcave.html
Virtual Field Trip Through The Oman Ophiolite: http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Geol/vft/oman.html
Volcano World: http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vw.html
Web Accessible Diffractometer : http://149.164.187.226/xrd/maindiff.html
Web Crawler: http://webcrawler.com
World Lecture Hall: http://www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/index.html