One of the new workshops being offered by Pisgah Forest Institute (PFI) next summer is titled "Planning With Forces of Nature" and will focus on water.  This two-day offering (June 22-24) will explore some causes of flood damage, water pollution, reductions in soil fertility and several other environmental problems resulting from planners and builders ignoring how natural systems function. Cost-effective management programs, such as those practiced by the USDA Forest Service and municipal wastewater treatment agencies, also will be examined. Participants will have an opportunity to put the information that they learn into practice while redesigning a proposed subdivision downstream of a wooded region.  The workshop attendees can earn up to 1.5 CEU's based on 15 contact hours as well as Criteria 3 credit in the North Carolina Environmental Education certification program. 

 

Recently PFI was experiencing technical problems with its website. These problems regarding on-line process of registering for future courses have been remedied by Aaron Bishop of the Information Technology staff at Brevard College. The Institute staff is grateful for his tenacity in solving this problem. Anyone who thought that they had enrolled four or more weeks ago in one or more of the Institute's workshops should check with the PFI staff to confirm that they are enrolled in the course(s) of his or her choice. As of mid-November, 33 educators had pre-registered for workshops. That number will increase substantially as a result of a large mailing to the North Carolina public and private schools sent during the week of 15 November. Anyone considering taking a PFI course during 2005 is urged to sign up early. All classes are limited to 24 students. A schedule for and a description of the Institute offerings can be found on the PFI website: www.brevard.edu/pfi.   

 

PFI Executive Director Dr. Robert A. Sweeney participated in the North American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE) national meeting which was held in Biloxi, Mississippi, November 6-11, 2004. In one of the concurrent workshops he presented a paper on securing grants and other external support which attracted an overflow audience of more than 120. Bob has been asked by NAAEE Executive Director William H. Dent and President Abigail Ruskey to join a six-member committee that will explore new sources of support for their association. The meeting also served as means for Dr. Sweeney to interact with representatives of several potential sources of support for and cooperation with PFI.  During 2005 Dr. Sweeney will be the president of the Environmental Educators of North Carolina, Inc. The latter organization paid his costs to attend the Mississippi conference.    

 

Brevard College has completed improvements to the new space off of Moore Science 110 which now houses PFI's conference table, storage cabinets and new printer.  Recently, new non-reflective lighting fixtures were installed in MS 110 where the majority of the PFI staff members work. This will eliminate distracting glare on their computer screens. The lights that were replaced were more than 40 years old and many of the fluorescent tubes did not work. Anyone who would like to see these much more functional spaces are welcome to do so. As part of the improvements, Executive Director of the Pisgah Forest Institute, Dr. Robert Sweeney, has a separate office (MS 108). His direct telephone line remains the same, (828) 884-8224. 

 

 

 PFI’s website is located at www.brevard.edu/pfi

 

 

KceeI has been planning and consulting with various partners on its 2005 summer courses.  Once again, KceeI will be offering the Watershed Concepts and Forest Stewardship courses along with a new Geology of Northeastern Pennsylvania course.  Options available to attendees will include Act 48 Hours, and Keystone College Undergraduate Credit.  Graduate Credit options are being pursued as well.  Currently, KceeI staff members are exploring possible materials to be used and provided to course participants in next summer’s sessions.  

 

The Institute will be utilizing an educational consultant to help expand on the graduate credit options.  The consultant is also helping to integrate the past course sessions to correlate with the PA Environment and Ecology Standards. 

 

KceeI is also in the latter stages of developing a brochure for the 2005 courses.  A draft was released to Keystone’s marketing department, who in turn is working with an outside consultant.  It is expected to be distributed by January of 2005. 

 

A stream cam was installed adjacent to KceeI/Willary Water Resource Center overlooking Ackerly Creek.  The cam has intranet capabilities and in the future Keystone hopes to provide the public access through the internet.  The camera is user controlled; up to 50 people (20 seconds per person) can zoom, pan, and tilt to view the area.  It has a 26X optical zoom and can view Keystone’s Nokomis suspension bridge, a 135 ft. structure which connects Keystone’s Main Campus and its Woodlands Campus.  The cam is 300 yards from the bridge and can be viewed with precision and clarity. 

 

Keystone's Suspension Bridge in the winter

 

The Institute is also beginning to plan for participation in the 20th Annual Envirothon.  The Envirothon is an environmental education program made available to Pennsylvania Conservation Districts in partnership with related state and federal agencies and other organizations.  The Envirothon program is designed to test high school students’ knowledge of Pennsylvania natural resources and environmental sciences.  The program emphasizes the importance of environmental sensitivity while stressing a need to achieve a social, ecological, and economic balance.  The Pennsylvania Envirothon provides future generations with the ability to be better equipped to address the complex natural resource concerns facing today’s world as well as the challenges of tomorrow.  Each high school is allowed two 5-student teams.  The five test stations include: aquatics, wildlife, soil & land use, forestry and an annual current environmental issue.  The current topic for this year is “Managing Cultural Resources.”  The keynote speaker will be Rich Pawling who performs as various characters.   He focuses on the development and presentation of historically accurate living history/first person interpretive characterizations and historical dramas that are both entertaining and educational. 

 

KceeI’s website is located at http://www.kceei.keystone.edu/.

 

 

 

Brevard College

 

A second series of the Level 1 Digital Storytelling workshop was conducted on November 9^th, 11^th and 12^th.  Seventeen participants took part in this workshop, including classroom teachers, media specialists, curriculum developers, and instructional technology facilitators from the entire Brevard service area.  In this workshop, participants created digital stories that focused on hygiene, child labor - then and now, Carl Van Vechten, and Appalachian dulcimers.  Participants from both Level 1 workshops that have been conducted thus far are eligible to return for Level 2 training (which includes video and still images) in the summer of 2005.

 

Meetings were held recently between Brevard AAM and the Pisgah Forest Institute (PFI) staff at Brevard College to discuss ways in which PFI – which conducts workshops on environmental education for K-12 teachers – can incorporate digitized primary sources from the Library of Congress into existing and future workshops.  Of most interest and use to PFI were the environmental maps and photos from American Memory collections. 

 

Director Jodi Huggins and Associate Director Symantha Petitt presented “Empowering Your Students with Visual Literacy” at the North Carolina Educational Technology Conference on December 1^st and 2^nd.  This presentation demonstrated ways to use LOC primary source images to improve reading, writing, and comprehension skills with students.

 

For the spring semester of 2005, Brevard AAM has planned several open enrollment workshop series that will be held on campus.  Another series of Level 1 Digital Storytelling workshops will be held in January and February.  In addition, a Core Workshop Series, which includes an introduction to using primary sources as well as individual workshops on the analysis of primary source media and their use in the classroom, will be held in January and February. 

 

Plans are also underway for system-wide workshops with Polk County Schools and a customized workshop series with Saluda School, a K-8 school in Polk County.

 

Brevard’s AAM program website is located at:  http://www.brevard.edu/aam/.

 

 

Mars Hill College

 

At Mars Hill College, the AAM staff  has completed two more Digital Storytelling workshop series.  The evening session that was held at the college finished on November 13^th  with some excellent work from participants.  Teachers created stories around the themes of community history, study skills, and animal compassion.  And example of community history is the project two teachers from tiny Bee Log Elementary – with a K-5 student population of about 50 – developed. Theirs was a story that told the rich history of their rather isolated community and the small school that serves it.  Beverly Brown and Peggy Wheeler combined photos from the LOC and a family collection, then took additional photographs that captured the community spirit and the creek that runs though the area.

 

At Burnsville Elementary, Dr. Ed Shearin and AnneMarie Walter are completing another 20-hour workshop series.  The 15 teachers have worked hard to learn new skills and integrate the LOC and digital cameras into their curriculum.  AAM staff expects to see some interesting stories from this high energy group.

 

Also at Burnsville, AnneMarie and Administrative Assistant Sandi Robertson presented a half-day workshop to introduce the LOC and LEARN NC to teachers and teacher assistants in grades K-2.   AnneMarie also introduced MHC pre-service teachers to the American Memory collections. 

 

Since the inception of the AAM digital storytelling workshops, 220 K-12 teachers in 52 schools have completed the 20-hour series.  Additionally, 31 college faculty and staff members in seven colleges have completed the workshop series.  There are currently eight workshops scheduled for spring, with six to be held at K-12 schools and two at Mars Hill College.

 

In late November, Ed and AnneMarie presented digital storytelling at the Appalachian Colleges Association Summit, a teaching and learning conference for faculty at the 31 colleges that make up the ACA.  On Thursday, Tom Sargent led a hands-on workshop for education faculty.  After a discussion about the value of visual literacy in the classroom, the 15 participants took digital pictures and created their own digital stories.  On Saturday, the participants in last spring’s workshop came together to show their digital stories and talk about their uses for this kind of project.  Some faculty members showed student work; others are using digital stories to demonstrate their expectations.

 

At the North Carolina Education Technology Conference in Greensboro, NC on December 1-2, AAM teachers Jennifer Scruggs and Glenna Rayburn will share some of their strategies for using digital storytelling in their classrooms.  Along with AnneMarie, the teachers will display the video and still picture digital stories that they have developed, the stories and vocabulary work that their students have done, and a veteran’s oral history project that ties in nicely with the Veteran’s History Project at the LOC.

 

Mars Hill’s AAM program website is located at:  http://www.aam.mhc.edu/.

 

 

 

Montreat College

 

The Montreat Partner concluded an 18-hour Primary Resources workshop series at Cliffside Elementary School on November 16th with 24 participants.  On November 22nd, Emma Elementary School completed an 18-hour Digital Storytelling workshop series with 13 participants.  Ten teachers at Erwin High School are scheduled to complete an 18-hour workshop series on Primary Resources on December 13th.  Sunshine Elementary School will have completed 30 hours of the Digital Storytelling workshop series by the end of December, and will continue the series in the spring.  WD Williams Elementary School completed 18 hours of the Digital Storytelling workshop series in October, and plans to begin the intermediate portion of the series in January.

 

This has been a very busy and productive fall season for the Montreat Partner.  Spring 2005 is shaping up to be busy as well.  Three schools have already scheduled workshops for January through March. 

 

Montreat’s AAM program website is located at:  http://aam.montreat.edu/.

 

 

Western Carolina University

 

Twenty-six teachers at Martin's Creek Elementary/Middle School in Cherokee County will have completed 18 contact hours of AAM workshops on December 8th.  Teachers have taken the introductory workshop and part one of the Digital Storytelling series.  They are learning to use their new digital cameras to prepare materials for teaching as well as how to develop lessons in which their students use the digital cameras to enhance learning experiences. In the next two workshops teachers will locate American Memory sound recordings, motion pictures, and images they can use with their students.  Teachers will create an activity using LOC sources and their own digital cameras that add visual reinforcement for their students. 

 

The AAM National Lesson Plan Database now contains 66 lessons.  The most currently added lessons are:

 

Ÿ         “Traveling Through North Carolina” by Melody Davis, Montreat AAM Teacher, 4th grade (social studies, information skills, computer skills) http://152.53.6.14/lessonplans/mdavis/

Ÿ         “Appreciating our Educational Roots” by Robyn Elliott, Montreat AAM Teacher, 12th grade (teacher cadets) http://152.53.6.14/lessonplans/relliott/

Ÿ         “What Kids Did Before There Was Television” by Vickie Gray, Montreat AAM Teacher, Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd (healthful living, social studies, language arts, mathematics) - http://152.53.6.14/lessonplans/vgray/

 

The WCU AAM Office will be contacting each AAM director during the first week in December regarding AAM workshop curriculum information needed.  Staff will be looking at the AAM workshops and asking directors the following:

 

Ÿ         Which workshops are requested most frequently?

Ÿ         Do you modify the workshops or use them and the supporting materials as presented online?

Ÿ         Do you teach workshops not listed on the matrix?  If so, what are they?

 

WCU’s AAM program website is located at:  http://aam.wcu.edu/newaam/.

 

 

California University of Pennsylvania

 

The AAM project at California University of PA has evolved into several distinct but related foci that guide the staff’s planning and activities.  Following is a list of AAM foci and the work activities related to each of them.

 

AAM Workshops

 

Designing and delivering workshops to K-12 teachers in California University’s service area remains the core activity and consumes the bulk of the staff’s time.  Following are this month’s workshop-related activities:

 

California School District

Ÿ         Three workshops delivered on-site at California High School.

Ÿ         California Area School District became an AAM participant school district when Byron Holdiman presented the “Introduction to the Library of Congress American Memory Project and Online Primary Resources” to seven teachers representing all grade levels from a variety of disciplines.

Ÿ         Eight teachers attended a second workshop, “What Are Primary Resources?”

Ÿ         Seven teachers, including the school librarian, attended a third AAM workshop, “Integrating Internet Resources In a Meaningful Way.”

 

Canon-McMillan School District

Ÿ         Canon-McMillan became a participating school district when 19 teachers from all grade levels and disciplines attended the first AAM workshop, “Introduction to the Library of Congress American Memory Project and Online Primary Resources.”  The workshop was presented on-site at Canon-McMillan High School.

 

Washington School District

Ÿ         Byron Holdiman presented “Make It and Take It,” the fourth in a continuing series of workshops at Washington High School.  Five Washington School District teachers and one community member participated in the workshop.

 

Integrating AAM into California University of Pennsylvania courses

 

A major goal of AAM at California University is to ensure that the resources now available through AAM and the LOC remain available long after the grant expires.  To that end, AAM staff is working with others at the university to integrate AAM into the university’s courses wherever appropriate.  Following is a summary of these activities.   

 

College of Education and Human Services

The AAM director was on the agenda at the bi-weekly meeting attended by department chairpersons and others important to carrying out the College’s mission.  Michael Brna presented an overview of AAM and an update about the project’s progress and current status. The intent of the overview was to poll the group to learn how and when AAM/LOC materials could be integrated into courses scheduled by education majors.  The Elementary Education Department chairperson invited the AAM director to attend the Department’s 11/22/04 meeting to make a proposal to faculty for their input, which he did.  The department faculty will discuss the idea and reconnect with AAM afterwards.  

 

Department of History and Political Science

Faculty members have agreed to introduce AAM/LOC into courses offered through the Department.  Beginning in the spring 2005 semester, AAM staff will make one-hour presentations in five separate survey 100 level courses, which will reach a total of approximately 300 students.  One assistant professor, Dr. Laura Tuennerman, will write AAM/LOC material into the curriculum of the History 347 class.  The Department enthusiastically supports AAM/LOC and will remain open to partnering with AAM in other ways that provide mutual benefit.  Both parties have agreed to continue discussions.  Dr. Tuennerman has enabled these activities by acting as the liaison between the Department and AAM.  She is also a member of the AAM Advisory Committee.

 

Department of Library Services

Marsha Nolf has agreed to permit AAM personnel to make a one-hour presentation to her Honors Program Information Sciences’ students during the Spring 2005 semester.  The presentation will include a presentation and a hands-on activity using the LOC online materials.  Dr. Nolf will also allow AAM staff to provide a professional development activity to Library staff in Spring 2005.  The professional development is scheduled for February 2005 and will consist of a one-hour session in the morning and a duplicate one-hour session in the afternoon so all Library personnel become familiar with the resources available from AAM and the LOC.

 

Community Outreach

 

AAM visited with Reverend Paul Nam Min of the First Presbyterian Church in California to discuss their efforts to collect and preserve artifacts related to the church’s history.  A three-person volunteer committee is responsible for the project.  Byron Holdiman, digital preservationist, viewed the artifacts and discussed the digitization process and offered to serve as an advisor to the group.  

 

Department of Library Services and Public Libraries

 

During the past month, AAM and Department of Library Services staff members have been meeting to explore ways to collaborate and bring together project and department strengths to advance opportunities where mutual benefit exists.  The Dean of Library Services, Doug Hoover, and Marsha Nolf, Public Service Coordinator at Manderino Library, represent the library, and Michael Brna and Byron Holdiman represent AAM.  After several discussions, the group identified two collaborative opportunities, which are being actively pursued. 

 

Digitization project at Manderino Library

The group has agreed to undertake a pilot digitization project, which will be used to develop digitization strategies for future projects at Manderino Library, public libraries, and local historical societies.  The plan is to digitize portraits of the principals and presidents that led California Normal School to become California University of Pennsylvania.  Photos and prints of historic campus buildings will also be digitized, and the institution’s history will be recorded along with the digitized collection. Byron Holdiman, AAM digital preservationist, and Betty Shaw, reference librarian at Manderino, meet for four hours once each week to sort, catalogue, and prepare materials for digitization. Their groundwork will be the basis for a framework to facilitate digitization that others can use in their efforts. Local historical society and public library personnel often lack the skills and knowledge to consider such projects and this pilot will be used as a model to inform and educate them about the process. 

 

Outreach to Public Libraries

The Department of Library Services is increasing its emphasis on outreach to local public libraries and sees a role for AAM in its efforts.  On 11/20/04, AAM personnel were invited to attend a meeting to discuss outreach to public libraries.  Marsha Nolf and Betty Shaw represented the Department of Library Services and Melinda Tanner, library consultant, represented the network of public libraries in Washington and Greene Counties. Michael Brna and Byron Holdiman represented AAM.  AAM personnel suggested an awareness and learning campaign for library personnel built around AAM workshops.  The plan would be to deliver workshops to librarians and/or to use the public libraries as vehicles to deliver workshops to interested and eligible constituents.  One goal would be to help local libraries collect and preserve local history; hence, related workshops can be offered to help librarians understand the processes not only so they can collect the histories, but to help them include those activities in their strategic plans. 

There is also interest in collaborating to produce local oral histories for the Veteran’s History Project.  Related workshops can be used to generate interest and to develop the skills necessary to conduct oral histories in the manner necessary to submit them to the LOC.  There was also discussion about co-sponsoring a field trip for public librarians to the LOC, which was very well received and is tentatively planned for spring 2005.  

 

Other

 

Michael Brna reports that Annette Gates, AAM Assistant, is leaving her part-time position to join California University's ranks as a full-time member of the university’s purchasing department.  Annette had been a valuable asset to the project and was responsible for laying much of the groundwork that helped establish AAM at Cal U.  Her thoroughness, professionalism and good humor will be missed, but all at Cal U are thankful she was part of the team and hopeful that her new position will be rewarding and fulfilling.

 

CUP’s AAM program website is located at:  http://www.cup.edu/education/aam.

 

 

Waynesburg College

 

Five teachers representing Carmichaels, West Greene, and Trinity school districts attended the on-campus evening workshops in October and November.  The format was different from previous workshops and provided a wonderful opportunity for an in-depth focus on individual skill levels and interests. The resulting final projects surpassed previous workshops. From a staff perspective, this workshop provided opportunities for fine-tuning the search strategies and primary document analysis activities.  Future participants will benefit from lessons learned in these evening workshops.

 

On November 9^th,  13 teachers from the Albert Gallatin came to campus for their second workshop day, which centered on “Mapping Memories” and the production of individual curriculum/standards-based projects using LOC primary documents.  Presenters Ann Canning and Amy Martin were challenged at 10:30 a.m. when all electricity on campus shut down due to a truck wreck near a power line!  Fortunately, a guest speaker, James Randolph had been invited to share local history and local primary documents/artifacts with the group. Randolph was a student at Waynesburg College in the 1940s, and later taught in the geology and music departments.  He is currently the Waynesburg College Museum curator.  By the time Randolph completed his tour to the college museum, the electricity was on, but Internet access was not restored.  The participants worked with the primary documents they had saved before the blackout to begin their projects.  Mapping activities using wide-format printed documents for analysis saved the day.  Fortunately this same group of teachers will work with Waynesburg AAM in March on a final oral history project.

 

Trinity School District workshops have evolved into the most significant events to date.  On November 24^th, a one-hour presentation was made to 75 senior high school teachers. The school district administration is housed in a building formerly known as Trinity Hall built in the 1870s. That former private academy is portrayed on the 1897 LOC map of Washington, PA. A great deal of interest was generated during the introduction using the RJ Lee software and a virtual walk around the town. 

 

Three teachers from the Trinity School District who teach gifted students, speech, and library science requested an ongoing local history project to analyze primary documents and interview senior citizens.  That will begin in January and the group will meet weekly through May. In preparation for this project, Barb Kirby has been working with the media department and Elizabeth Ridgway to schedule a two-hour video conference workshop on oral history for the Waynesburg AAM staff. This is tentatively scheduled for December 13.

 

Waynesburg College AAM staff returned to Trinity School District on November 30^th for the entire day.  Fifty-five middle school teachers attended an introductory presentation.  This was followed by a two-hour lab session on search strategies for 22 English and social studies teachers. The high school principal scheduled two 90-minute search strategies lab sessions for 42 teachers from the core subjects of English, social studies, science, and math.  Bonnie Ordonez, Director of Waynesburg College Master of Educational Technology program, assisted AAM staff during these packed workshops.  In order to give these teachers a lot of resources in a short period of time, a printed lesson with 16 primary documents related to inventors and inventions was given to all participants as a take-home packet.  This lesson, inspired by the Presidents activity presented by Rhonda Clevenson at our last directors’ meeting in Washington, D.C., was developed by Sue Wise and Ann Canning.  Sue Wise is a senior undergraduate elementary education major at Waynesburg College.  You can find this lesson on our website below under the link for Resources.

 

Waynesburg’s AAM program website is located at:  http://aam.waynesburg.edu/.

 

 

University of South Carolina Upstate

 

The AAM team members at USC Upstate is wrapping up three workshop series on “Instructional use of Digital Images,” worth 25 hours of recertification credits each.  They have also completed an eight-hour, four-session workshop on “Instructional Use of Digital Video Recording” involving use of Microsoft Movie Maker 2.  Participants created movies about Mardi Gras in New Orleans, a trip to Turkey, and one middle school’s history.  These are viewable at http://www.spartanburg6.k12.sc.us/LEGMS/movie.htm.   Teachers were particularly excited to receive a CD of royalty-free music.  They have all been enthusiastic about what they have learned in the workshops. 

 

AAM Digital Preservationist Samantha Cofield will be leaving the Partner in January in order to work closer to home in Columbia, SC.  She has accepted a position as curriculum coordinator for SCETV, where she will be correlating math, science, and technology standards to interactive lessons at http://www.knowitall.org/.  “I have enjoyed working with Bob and the teachers on the AAM project tremendously, and I hope that the grant lasts for a long time.  It has been a privilege to work with the Library of Congress, not just participating in communities of practice, but also in helping to build them.  The work we are doing here is very important, and I have seen the success of it firsthand.  Keep up the good work, and if the project grows to the South Carolina midlands, then I would love to help out with it again in the future.”

 

USCS’s AAM program website is located at:

http://www.uscupstate.edu/academics/education/adventure_mind.asp.

 

 

Northern Virginia Schools Partnership

 

The Northern Virginia partnership continues to grow with plenty of after-school workshops, professional development day workshops, special LOC tours, and curriculum writing projects. Teachers in all four of the school districts (Alexandria City, Fairfax County, Falls Church, and Arlington) have been implementing learning experiences with students using primary sources to deepen student understanding of the state/school district curriculum. To read the full lesson plan go to  http://www.aamnva.org/teachers/fc_lessons/jamestown/index.html. AAM partners who work with art teachers may be interested in the day long AAMNVA workshop for art teachers on line at http://www.aamnva.org/program/departm/art/index.html.

 

Northern Virginia’s AAM program website is located at:  http://www.aamnva.org/.

 

 

Home School Program

 

AAM Home School Presentations

 

Pam Johnson presented the online lessons at the National School Board Association T+L² conference in Denver and the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education E-Learn conference in Washington during the last month. Administrators, school board members, educators, and college faculty were interested in the application of these lessons in their settings. The online lessons are in the final stages of being prepared for distribution to students outside of the current pilot group.

 

Student Work for Fall 2004

 

Students are continually adding to the AAM Home School Student Page. Their work is available at http://www.aamhomeschool.org/fall_04.htm.

The two lessons highlighted this month are:

Steven’s Inventing Entertainment with Thomas Edison.

Micah’s Portraits of Presidents and First Ladies PowerPoint presentation.

 

AAM Home School Staff Changes

 

The AAM Home School Program is sad to say good-bye to Deborah Roberts. Deborah has served as the administrative assistant for the Home School Program since August 2002. Deborah has decided to try the stay-at-home job for a while. Her friendship will be missed in the office and AAM Home School wishes her the best of luck in future endeavors.

 

The Home School’s AAM program website is located at:  http://www.aamhomeschool.org/.

 

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