About this course Satellite Applications for Geoscience Education is a distance-learning course for science teachers that seeks to leverage the wealth of satellite observations available on the Internet with teachers connection to students in order to raise the level of understanding of our planet's dynamic air and water systems. The material in these lessons represents a collaborative effort between Atmospheric, Remote Sensing and Geology experts from the University of Wisconsin and Ocean experts from the University of Washington. This collaboration was funded by the National Science Foundation. Unless otherwise cited, featured imagery was produced at the UW-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center.

The development of this course began with a Curriculum Design Summit in November 2006 where science teachers convened with University researchers, experts from the SCALE project ( System-wide Change for All Learners and Educators) and an evaluator to craft a geoscience curriculum specifically designed to meet the needs of high school science teachers.

How to take this course

This is a 12 week online course offered each fall semester starting the last week in September and ending in mid-December. Educators must register with the University of Wisconsin to take this course and can sign up for 1, 2 or 3 credits, depending on your professional development needs. Those who opt for 3 credits are expected to host a VISITview session in their classrooms.

The course is divided in 6 Units on Remote Sensing, Geology, Oceanography, Meteorology, Climate, and Earth as a System. Each Unit is comprised of several lessons that are laid out in the same sequence, work through the material in the order that it is presented, visit all links, interact whenever possible, and be sure to complete the Unit quiz and evaluation at the end of the last lesson in each Unit.

Grades will be based on quiz scores for fall semester 2007 with multiple choice scores graded as follows:

A  96 to 100  /   A-  91 to 95  /   B+  87 to 90 /   B  82 to 86  /   B-  78 to 81  /   C  77 and below

There is also one essay question for each Unit that can act to bump your multiple choice score up a category.

VISITview lectures
In order to install and participate in VISITview lectures, you will need to create a new directory on your hard drive, download a self extracting, compressed file into this directory, and then run this file in order to extract the data and program files. Information concerning FTP addresses and file names will be sent directly to registered class participants.

System Requirements

For optimal performance, it is recommended that you use a newer browser when taking this course, such as Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7, Netscape 7.2 (or newer), Opera or Safari. You will also need Java enabled in your browser.

Questions?
Please direct questions to Margaret Mooney at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center.