"New" teaching methods

I say new because this is new to me, and also the students, and I haven’t seen this elsewhere. That does though not necessarily mean that I think no one has ever done this before.

This method is about letting the students post recent news about the topic of the course, for example glaciology and water science, on a web page.

Each student posts a news item about twice a semester. They write a short summary of the main points of the news item, and some related background.

They then introduce, explain, the news to the class.

This has proved to be lots of fun, the students are more interested in the topic and are pretty good in finding interesting news related to the class topics.

Examples from the water science class are here and from the glaciology class are here.

Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Changes, 2003-2009 [HD]

Scientific article about the wildfires in Iceland 2006

Finally our article in International Journal of Remote Sensing about the wildfires of 2006, Mýraeldana 2006, is out. This article emphasizes the use of satellite data to obtain estimates about the spread and intensity of wildfires.

Since final review, almost a year and a half has passed.

Thorsteinsson, Throstur , Magnusson, Borgthor and Gudjonsson, Gudmundur. 2011.

Large wildfire in Iceland in 2006: Size and intensity estimates from satellite data.

International Journal of Remote Sensing, 32(1): 17 — 29.

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01431160903439858

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01431160903439858

 

An example about the type of information it is possible to obtain from satellite data on wildfires.

Strong winds today, 4 January 2011, and high PM10

Strong winds cause high levels of PM10 this morning in Reykjavík.

Image taken from city of Reykjavik air quality monitoring station at GRE.

Particulate matter during New year’s eve 2010

A little wind helped a lot to make the air quality good during New year’s eve 2010 (both at GRE and HEH -  two measuring station in Reykjavik and Hafnafjordur, repsectively).

The highest value was “only” 350 micro-g/m3 – has previously reached well above 2000 micro-g/m3.

The wind kept the values low, wind speed even felt stronger than the measurement indicates, but it is also possible that there were a bit fewer fireworks this year (?).

Happy New YEAR !