Operating within the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), the USGS' latest earthquake application provides a substantial amount of easily accessible data concerning both historical and present day seismic activity around the world. Educators and students of all academic levels will find the application especially useful when producing informative and compelling curriculum and research projects.

As an Earth science educator at an international high school for over twenty years, one of my goals was to think of ways for students to generate differentiated culturally-responsible project based assessments using real-world data.  The subject of plate tectonics and earthquakes naturally lends itself to these types of assessments, specifically due to students' past experiences with earthquakes (this is especially true when working with people from Central and South America).  Familiarity with academic content through past experiences (especially when shared by others within the class) typically yields increases in student participation, motivation, and overall academic output/performance when producing project based assessment tasks (PBAT's).

One of the more successful PBAT's I've assigned my students utilizes the USGS' earthquake hazards program and latest earthquake application.  Students are asked to choose a topic in which they'd like to research (they also have the option to create their own topic).  Topics are typically sorted by difficulty (easy, medium, hard) and contain varying degrees of expected work and research.  All students have the ability to fulfill their project goals using data obtained from their country of origin or choice.  Students typically approach this PBAT from two main areas of research: frequency and/or intensity of seismic activity within a localized area, or comparing seismic activity at different plate boundaries.  The application's intuitive user-interface allows students to easily access and generate data concerning these topics in any part of the world.  In addition to allowing for geographic specifications, earthquake data can be organized based on date and time as well (going back to the earlier part of the 1900's)!

The USGS’ hazards program and latest earthquake application provides both educators and students with several opportunities to create truly worthwhile project based learning.  It is my hope that this presentation provides participants with ideas that can be utilized within their classes and places of education.