Distance Earth Sciences National Class (DENC) Project
This project was developed in order to overcome two main constrains for schools to adopt the high school ES program: shortage of available Earth Science teachers and the ability of schools to open new programs of study. The “national” class consists of students from different schools all over Israel to study the same program as students from a school-based program study, but as distance learners. Following our previous research we developed a computerized, web-based, distance-learning program that is identical to the regular inquiry-based program. The students conduct all the inquiry-based lab activities with home-kits and through the instructions they find on the DENC website. All the field trips are implemented and students are supervised with the same intensity as a regular class, through the web tools.