The goal is to advance, in the spirit of the Earth Science Literacy Initiative, some tentative “big ideas” for volcanology, to facilitate discussion by the volcanological community about the current state of the art research in volcanology.

What are the ideas we think are broadly important to others that come from study of volcanoes?  What is volcanology good for? How does it speak to the world?

How do we propose to communicate these ideas to others?

A second goal is to promote a higher level of learning by developing these big ideas in depth. We are starting to believe that using big ideas in this way be be an effective advanced learning motivation, by providing a sustained interest and urgency... 

This web development was part of a graduate class in volcanology--where we tried to explore volcanology through its big ideas, rather than the traditional textbook chapters. Each student adopted and explored one of the big ideas.

      OK, What are the Big ideas?

Discussion with Full House, Williston School, Vermont; November 22, 2011