Spring 2016 Course offering

New Fall 2015 Course Offering

Costa Rica Study Abroad - Summer 2015

I taught two undergraduate courses in a KIIS study abroad program in Costa Rica during the Summer of 2015, Environmental Science and Global Environmental Change. Here are the readings for the courses. We visited Arenal Volcano, the Osa Peninsula, and did homestays.  My students and I explored ecotourism and its successes and criticisms; the pros and cons of different ways of producing coffee (and the varieties of ways coffee is processed); and how diversity can be defined and measured.  My twins, Kate and Sara, went with me. Here are my photos

Apiculture activity for Global Env Issues - GEO 162

To better understand the practice of beekeeping as part of our lectures on CCD, my students are asked to develop the startup equipment and costs for keeping a colony.

Watermark

In my GEO 162 Global Environmental Issues course student view at least one documentary film a week outside of class as part of the curriculum. This past spring we watched the film "Watermark" for the first time. It's from the directors of "Manufactured Landscapes" - I show clips from this film in class as well.  Here are a few images from Watermark. I've clipped stills of the more stunning scenes and put them into this Powerpoint file for classroom use.  Here are reviews of Watermark on MRQE.

Mapping activity with middle school students

This (very cold and snowy) winter I worked with a local middle school on indoor mapping activities. To teach them the components of a map and the conundrums of trying to represent a real world surface on a piece of paper, students mapped a fictitious island in a video game. Wii has a Resorts dvd that features an island where all its various sports activities take place. Studentswere able to fly around the island to identify the details of island shape, land cover, and scale. The students also had to figure out a way to represent the vertical relief on the island since a very large volcano is a prominent landform. A couple of their maps shown below can be enlarged if you click on them.

What I listen to

Three Chord Monte, on WFMU, freeform radio our of Jersey City.