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An Instructor's Not So Comprehensive Guide to Designing
Instructional Support in an On-line Environment
Using Freeware to Model Geological Processes
There are a number of tools, used in combinations with one another, a teacher can use to enhance the learning experience of students. A sampling of these software tools are listed below.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has made available on the Internet Digital Elevation Models (DEM) of selected areas within all 50 states. When converted from their binary data, they look like a black and white image. But instead of displaying a photo of a landscape of hills, mountains, and valleys with their associated plant life, you get the elevation of the land. The darker a pixel value in the image, the lower the elevation in relation to other pixel values within that image.
Most of the images come in a compressed format, so once downloaded they will need to be unzipped. I like to use Aladdin Expander as my unzipping program. There isn't any format I have found that this program is unable to unzip. It is a commercial piece of software available as a free download from the Aladdin Systems Hompage.
The two images on the right (Oroville Dam, California) were produced from text data converted by DEMview and MacDem. DEMview takes the dataset and produces the black and white image displayed on the right. This black and white image is the "normal" view of a Digital Elevation Model. The image can now be analyzed for elevation data, area, distances, etc. using NIH Image or Scion Image.
The same raw data can be converted by MacDEM to show the topography of the land. Each point on each image can be matched to each other. At first glance of these two images, one would probably never suspect there might be a volcano in the image. The appearance of the volcano becomes apparent when the image is converted to 3D. The software will allow the user to change the direction of light falling incident to the land, will allow the merging of congruent data sets to display huge tracts of terrain, and will allow the user to export the data into different formats. My favorite format is POV- Ray.
POV-Ray is a 3D modeling program. Below, I have provided links to illustrate the versatility of this program. The images are of the Oroville Dam in California and Mt. St. Helens in Washington. These images are just a quick look at how they can be constructed, manipulated and displayed for use in the classroom. You might also want to visit Professor Stephen Reynold of Arizona State University( Geological Visualization) and learn how he uses Bryce 4 (a commercial program) to illustrate geological formations of the Southwestern United States.
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