PAESTA Podcasts

PAESTA proudly presents a podcasting series for K-12 teachers to increase their science content knowledge through short audio podcasts, supplemented with relevant resources. The 2015-2016 PAESTA President Kathy Tait generated the idea of tapping in to the content expertise of higher education faculty to assist K-12 teachers with increasing their own Earth and space content knowledge. As time and resources for professional development are decreasing for teachers, PAESTA is committed to not only providing curricular resources through the PAESTA Classroom, but providing an opportunity to learn science content from professionals in an audio format.

Our goal at PAESTA is to release one new podcast per month that answers the questions asked by YOU, our PAESTA members! Each podcast will be recorded by a Earth/space science professional with content expertise and placed online with supporting images, links, and relevant exercises found in the PAESTA Classroom. Each podcast will be available through the PAESTA iTunes channel and on this page. For ADA compliance, the PAESTA website will have a transcript for each audio file. We hope you listen to our podcasts and enjoy our "You Asked, We Answered!" series.

K-12 teachers – in order to provide these podcasts, we need to know what you want to know! What discipline questions do you have for us to pass along to our content experts? Any questions relating to the “what” and “how” of the Earth and space sciences, as well as questions about Earth and space science careers, are welcome! Please submit your questions through the Contact Form on the PAESTA website.

College faculty, professional scientists, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students – in order to provide this resource for Pennsylvania’s K-12 teachers, we need your help in answering the questions posted by our teachers! Please review the questions our teachers have asked below and contact Laura Guertin (guertin@psu.edu) if there is a question that grabs your attention, and you would like to help generate a response. Not sure how to approach creating a podcast? View this PDF for some tips to get started.

Subscribe to the podcast feed.
Open in iTunes.

PAESTA Podcast Series: Episode 4 - What is a Watershed?

You Asked, We Answered!

Transcript for the podcast

We all live in a watershed – think of it as your ecological address, and no matter where you are on land, any water that falls in that same location has a drainage destination determined by elevation and landforms. A watershed is an area of land where the surface water (including lakes, streams, reservoirs, and wetlands) and the underlying groundwater flows from a higher to lower elevation. Streams and rainfall within a watershed will typically drain to a common outlet, such as the outflow of a reservoir, mouth of a bay, or any point along a stream channel. The word watershed is sometimes used interchangeably with drainage basin or catchment.

PAESTA Podcast Series: Episode 3 - How do Scientists Measure Rainfall?

You Asked, We Answered!

Transcript for the podcast

Many schools will have a rain gauge installed, where students can measure and record the amount of rain that falls each day. But scientists do not measure precipitation on the ground – they measure precipitation from space, using a combination of active and passive remote-sensing techniques, improving the spatial and temporal coverage of precipitation observations on a global scale.  You see, reliable ground-based precipitation measurements are difficult to obtain because most of the world is covered by water, and many countries do not have precise rain measuring equipment (such as rain gauges and radar). Precipitation is also difficult to measure because precipitation systems can be somewhat random and can evolve very rapidly. During a storm, precipitation amounts can vary greatly over a very small area and over a short time span.

PAESTA Podcast Series: Episode 2 - What is the Difference Between Paleontology, Archaeology, and Anthropology?

You Asked, We Answered!

Transcript for the podcast

These career fields are front and center in pop culture, thanks to Hollywood blockbuster films, such as the Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones series. Unfortunately, popular culture can sometimes blur the boundaries and misrepresent these disciplines. This podcast explores the differences between the three fields of paleontology, anthropology, and archaeology.

PAESTA Podcast Series: Episode 1 - How Do We Know CO2 is Increasing?

Atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa Observatory

You Asked, We Answered!

Transcript for the podcast

We know that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have been increasing because we have the data! The story of collecting CO2 data begins in 1958, when a geochemist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Dr. Charles Keeling, started collecting measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at an observatory located over 11,000 feet in elevation on the Mauna Loa volcano on the big island of Hawaii. These systematic measurements Dr. Keeling started have become the most widely recognized record of human impact on Earth, linking rising levels of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels to the warming of the planet.

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