Seventy-five years ago, at 5:54 p.m. on March 10, 1933, southern California experienced its deadliest seismic disaster in recorded history when a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck the Long Beach area. The Long Beach earthquake occurred along the Newport-Inglewood fault zone centered just off the coast of Newport Beach, with a hypocentral depth of 10 kilometers. Seismic records suggest a maximum slip along the fault of about 1 meter, with a total rupture length of roughly 15 kilometers. The actual earthquake rupture lasted only 5 seconds, though ground shaking (as is typical) lasted at least twice as long. The maximum recorded ground acceleration was 0.22g, or 22% the force of gravity (though the nearest recording site for this data was 27 kilometers from the epicenter). Despite these rather modest seismological numbers, the earthquake killed over 120 people and caused property losses estimated at $50 million (1933) dollars.

According to the California Science Content Standards, sixth grade is Earth Sciences year, and part of a teacher's job is to teach earthquakes. It is with that in mind that middle school teacher Sue Robins attended the earthquake education workshop SCEC co-hosted with AEG back in September.

On Thursday, November 15, 2007, the fifth annual Earthquake Education Workshop was held at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Visualization Center (SIO VizCenter) at UC San Diego. In the previous four workshops educational specialists from the University of Southern California and the Pasadena Field Office of the U.S. Geological Survey offered training and support to the new SIO VizCenter instructors. This year was the inaugural workshop facilitated by instructors from the SCEC institutions in the San Diego region. Instructors at this year's workshop included Dr. Debi Kilb from the SIO VizCenter, Dr. Cheryl Peach from the Birch Aquarium at Scripps, Dr. Bridget Konter from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Dr. Robert Mellors from San Diego State University.

The Southern California Earthquake Center hosted a booth in the exhibition hall at the California Science Education Conference held in the Long Beach Convention Center, from October 25-27, 2007. Over 2,400 K-12 science educators from the state of California participated in the conference that is hosted annually by the California Science Teachers Association. At these meetings educators have the opportunity to attend workshops, exhibits and network with other professionals. The exhibit hall included a variety of booths ranging from textbook publishers to non-profit organizations and fundraisers.