Take a breath — where does the oxygen you inhaled come from? In our changing world, will we always have enough oxygen? What is in water that supports life? What is known? How do we know what we know about our vast oceans? These are just a few of the driving questions explored in this interactive STEAM high school curriculum module.

Students in marine science, environmental science, physics, chemistry, biology, integrated science, biotechnology and/or STEAM courses can use this curriculum module in order to use real-world, big data to investigate how our “invisible forest” influences ocean and Earth systems. Students build an art project to represent their new understanding and share this with the broader community.

This 4-week set of lessons is based on the oceanographic research of Dr. Anne Thompson of Portland State University in Oregon, which focuses on the abundant ocean phytoplankton Prochlorococcus. These interdisciplinary STEAM lessons were inspired by Dr. Thompson’s lab and fieldwork as well as many beautiful visualizations of Prochlorococcus, the ocean, and Earth. Students learn about the impact and importance of Prochlorococcus as the smallest and most abundant photosynthetic organism on our planet. Through the lessons, students act as both scientists and artists as they explore where breathable oxygen comes from and consider how to communicate the importance of tiny cells to human survival.

This module is written as a phenomenon-based, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) three-dimensional learning unit. Each of the lessons below also has an integrated, optional Project-Based Learning component that guides students as they complete the PBL process. Students learn to model a system and also design and evaluate questions to investigate phenomena. Students ultimately learn what is in a drop of ocean water and showcase how their drop contributes to our health and the stability and dynamics of global systems.

This article looks at the growing energy consumption from consumer electronics and the increases it may cause in greenhouse gases and global warming. The article appears in the free, online magazine Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears.

This course was developed as part of an Affordable Learning Georgia Textbook Transformation Grant awarded to two faculty members at Valdosta State University. The course includes units on critical thinking, arguments, fallacies, symbolic logic, syllogisms, research, and law. It also includes an instructor’s guide and lesson planning.

Passive Sampling Device (PSD) Technologies provides an overview of personal passive sampling, the stationary air sampler as a research tool, and the water and sediment samplers as research tools.

College is an Investment
We want to be sure you get your time and money's worth and graduate with little to no debt.

There's money out there to help you pay for college — some of it you may not have to pay back — and we want to help you get it.

In this section, we'll walk you through:
How much college costs and what your money goes to
How to get money for college
The kind of money that's available
Descriptions and links to funding programs
Whether your goal is to get started on a bachelor's degree and transfer, or to train for an in-demand job, you'll get an outstanding education for the lowest tuition.

Note: This is a Washington resource but has many resources that are useful for Oregon and Idaho students.

This issue of the free online magazine, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, explores how the Inuit of northern Canada, Inupiat of arctic Alaska, and Sami of northern Europe survive in a harsh environment. Instructional resources introduce students to these groups and their cultures.

We have created this free collection of resources in an effort to share with the world the amazing potential for making positive change that Permaculture design has to offer. Permaculture design is a method of landscape planning that can be applied to anything, from a home garden or farm to a city block or entire village. Permaculture design is an ethically based, whole-systems design approach to create sustainable human settlements and institutions. Although rooted in horticulture and agriculture, permaculture design also touches on regional planning, ecology, animal husbandry, technology, architecture and international development.

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