Introducing Earth@Home
Last updated September 22, 2020
At the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), we have a long history of serving diverse audiences, from scientists to school children. As part of an ongoing effort to continue to grow our national reach and expand our educational outreach offerings, we have developed a new online learning platform designed to help anyone in the U.S. learn about the Earth where they live! This new website, called Earth@Home™ , is rich with free interactive content about Earth and its life, with a focus on geology, paleontology, climate, and the connections between Earth’s different systems. The major components of this new online platform include regionally-based guides to Earth science, an online, open-access Earth science textbook, and a virtual science toolkit that will bring traditional fieldwork, laboratory activities, and specimen collections to the online classroom.
Screenshot of the homepage of Earth@Home.
Screenshot from the Earth@Home homepage: discover, explore, and investigate your Earth.
Earth@Home aims to teach everyone about the natural environment where they live. Additionally, the open-access Earth science textbook and virtual science toolkit will help educators create robust Earth science lesson plans and offer free learning resources for their students to utilize.
Earth@Home will continue to grow over the next several years, with new content being added regularly. While the site is a “work in progress,” it is intended to be impactful for educators right now as many are being forced to quickly adapt to the changes the COVID-19 pandemic has presented and are transitioning their classrooms to online formats. These new, free resources will help high school educators, college faculty, and any other teachers meet the challenges associated with these sudden changes. Finding innovative ways to support the education community has been an important priority for PRI for over two decades but has become the focus of considerable effort since the pandemic began in mid-March.
The Earth@Home project is being led by PRI Director of Science Communication Dr. Jonathan Hendricks. “PRI has been producing high-quality educational materials related to Earth science for over 20 years. Earth@Home is an effort to integrate and update many of these resources and make them freely available online,” shared Hendricks. “The overarching goal of the project is to help people become more aware of the world around them, ranging from the history recorded in the rocks below their feet to the challenges presented by climate change.”
Check out Earth@Home today!