Have you ever experienced an earthquake of magnitude greater than 7?
Do you or your students even know
what that means?
Thousands of people have lost their lives, and thousands more their homes and all their possessions through the destructive force of earthquakes. By increasing and sharing knowledge, can we reduce the immensity of an earthquake disaster?
As teachers we have the resources of our libraries and the Internet, and hundreds of potential "researchers" in our classrooms. Why not see what can be learned? Maybe together we can compile information that can save lives.
Try the Collaborative, Web-based project entitled designed for 7th and 8th grade students from four different schools (preferably, at least two of these schools should be at or near sites of frequent earthquake activity). This project could be done anytime during the school year, but for schools in Taipei it is best between March and May.
This project is designed to coordinate earthquake data from several cities to try to discover any correlations that could initiate life-saving recommendations, while providing students with current understanding of the geology of our planet.
This project meets almost all of the Essential Academic Learning Requirements of Washington State in the areas of Communications, Reading, Writing, Technology, Science, Math and even Art. You may review this project by clicking on [Know Your Enemy] at the end of this page. You may also email the author, Karen Pearson, a middle school teacher at the Taipei American School by clicking the link at the end of this page.