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What is OER?

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Brief video describing Open Educational Resources (OER) and their associated copyrights and permissions. Generally Open Educational Resources have terms of use that allow for permissions that are known as the "Five Rs:" Reuse, Remix, Revise, Retain, and Redistribute.

Material Type: Lecture

Lunar Lander

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Can you avoid the boulder field and land safely, just before your fuel runs out, as Neil Armstrong did in 1969? Our version of this classic video game accurately simulates the real motion of the lunar lander with the correct mass, thrust, fuel consumption rate, and lunar gravity. The real lunar lander is very hard to control.

Material Type: Simulation

Author: Michael Dubson

Seismic Activity

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This laboratory activity demonstrates how seismic waves are generated and helps students understand how they can reveal the composition of Earth's inner layers. Students will construct models by filling shoe boxes with various materials, drop rocks on them to generate 'seismic waves', record the waves, and make observations about their differences.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive

Author: Robert DeMarco

A Flipped-Class Atmospheric Science Curriculum for Middle School Educators

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Members of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have designed a suite of atmospheric science learning modules for middle school students. The curriculum, which implements a flipped-classroom model, is cross-referenced with Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. It introduces students to topics such as temperature, pressure, severe weather safety, climate change, and air pollution through short instructional videos and critical thinking activities. A goal of this project is to provide middle school science educators with resources to teach while fostering early development of math and science literacy. The work is funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER award. For a complete list of learning modules and to learn more about the curriculum, visit https://www.atmos.illinois.edu/~nriemer/education.html

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Module

Authors: Dr. Nicole Riemer, Eric Snodgrass, Tyra Brown

Math, Grade 7, Proportional Relationships

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Proportional Relationships Type of Unit: Concept Prior Knowledge Students should be able to: Understand what a rate and ratio are. Make a ratio table. Make a graph using values from a ratio table. Lesson Flow Students start the unit by predicting what will happen in certain situations. They intuitively discover they can predict the situations that are proportional and might have a hard time predicting the ones that are not. In Lessons 2–4, students use the same three situations to explore proportional relationships. Two of the relationships are proportional and one is not. They look at these situations in tables, equations, and graphs. After Lesson 4, students realize a proportional relationship is represented on a graph as a straight line that passes through the origin. In Lesson 5, they look at straight lines that do not represent a proportional relationship. Lesson 6 focuses on the idea of how a proportion that they solved in sixth grade relates to a proportional relationship. They follow that by looking at rates expressed as fractions, finding the unit rate (the constant of proportionality), and then using the constant of proportionality to solve a problem. In Lesson 8, students fine-tune their definition of proportional relationship by looking at situations and determining if they represent proportional relationships and justifying their reasoning. They then apply what they have learned to a situation about flags and stars and extend that thinking to comparing two prices—examining the equations and the graphs. The Putting It Together lesson has them solve two problems and then critique other student work. Gallery 1 provides students with additional proportional relationship problems. The second part of the unit works with percents. First, percents are tied to proportional relationships, and then students examine percent situations as formulas, graphs, and tables. They then move to a new context—salary increase—and see the similarities with sales taxes. Next, students explore percent decrease, and then they analyze inaccurate statements involving percents, explaining why the statements are incorrect. Students end this sequence of lessons with a formative assessment that focuses on percent increase and percent decrease and ties it to decimals. Students have ample opportunities to check, deepen, and apply their understanding of proportional relationships, including percents, with the selection of problems in Gallery 2.

Material Type: Unit of Study