Teaching Tips

• This visualization could be applicable to any watershed, water cycle, geography, water use, water sources, and distribution lessons.
• Note that this resource does not directly connect with climate and energy, though knowledge of the water cycle is a fundamental concept for understanding climate cycles. A facilitator could use this resource when teaching about flooding impacts of climate change, hydroelectric power, and/or mitigation and adaptation strategies.
• Teachers should determine an area they want their students to focus on, and facilitate follow-up questions to help students take away new knowledge from this visualization.
• Teachers should provide context and guiding questions for student use.
• From this visualization, educators may also be able to develop a jigsaw activity where students compare drainage patterns from their location of interest and why the patterns vary.

About the Content

• In this resource, students learn about the relationship between precipitation and fresh water in the US.
• The data is from late 2020, so it is up to date as of the time of review.
• The data is from a reputable source, as it is pulled from a USGS (government-funded) project.
• Source code and data sources provided.
• Comments from expert scientist: Playfully (and impressively) introduces the catchment/watershed concept! Though, it may be worthwhile to explicitly introduce the term catchment to the material, and maybe even highlighting the catchment at the end of the visualization belonging to to the same river to sea mouth/undrained inland lake. It is also not very clear hot the path is computed when the "drop" arrives in a lake or goes through it. May be better to make the whole lake blue?

About the Pedagogy

• This is a dynamic visualization that students can interact with, making it interesting and engaging.
• This visualization can be personalized to whatever information a student wants to see about how water moves geographically.
• Compare and contrast, patterns, systems analysis, creating models, and developing predictions are all teaching methods that would pair well with this visualization.
• Users have the flexibility to select anywhere in the US, thus making it more flexible and potentially relevant to them and their lives, making the activity all the more engaging.

• This resource engages students in using scientific data.
  See other data-rich activities

Technical Details/Ease of Use

• The visualization functions well, but users should be aware the screen can turn black if the speed is increased too quickly.
• An option for a whole-globe map is also available.

Related URLs These related sites were noted by our reviewers but have not been reviewed by CLEAN