Inquiry into Paleontology pedagogy

Front Range Science Network
Activity for Regional Science Teachers

Joanna Wright
Jordon Hand
Mike Marlow

A series of paleontology courses, geared towards teachers with a total of nine credit hours leading to a certificate in paleontology. The courses in this program are:

Paleontology Workshops (3CR) Spring 2004

Teachers may also take Introductory Paleontology (3CR, Spring 2004) or Dinosaurs Past and Present (3CR Fall 2004) as part of their course requirements towards a Masters degree in Science Education

Spring Semester 2004 - Paleontology Workshops
A series of Saturday workshops designed for science teachers who want to learn about paleontology and how to incorporate it into their curriculum.

Dinosaur and paleontology links

I have chosen only highly reputable sites - mainly Universities, Museums and Journals. Most of these have extensive lists of links that you can follow to find out more.

University of California Museum of Paleontology
Evolution Exhibit for teachers - new!
Phylogeny - the diversity and relationships of life
Geologic time
Dinosaurs and their relatives
Fossils - how they are formed

The Tree of Life
This takes you straight to the dinosaurs section. This site mainly gives the relationships between different groups of dinosaurs and some references that you can follow up.

Walking with Dinosaurs
The website of the BBC TV series. Lots of extra information about dinosaurs some of which was written by me!

National Geographic Dinosaurs
Features on articles that have been published in their magazine

The Rex Files - New Scientist Magazine

Evolution teaching activities on the web

NSTA Evolution Resources

PBS Evolution series
Contains extra information on each of the seven topics covered in the series as well as resources and activities for teachers and students.

Nova Online The Missing Link
Games, resources and a Teacher's Guide to activities related to this television programme

University of California Museum of Paleontology
This takes you to K-12 resources for teaching science through paleontology and the fossil record

Who's on first - a relative dating activity

Evolution lessons
A whole site with lessons and resources for teaching evolution, mainly at a high school level. There is a variety of lessons on the nature of science, on natural selection, on evolution in general, on classification and one lesson on choosing the most plausible theory about the extinction of the dinosaurs.  This is the link to follow if you want to try an recreate the Miller-Urey experiment in your classroom. 

Education with Dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, London

Evolution in Action
A fun little game to illustrate a principle of natural selection

Credits: The artwork on this page is by Russell Hawley of the Tate Museum, Casper, Wyoming