There
is an increasing body of research results that support the premise that
integrating hands-on, environmental education field and related
experiences into the instruction of core subject matter (math, reading
comprehension, social studies, science, writing, etc.) significantly improves
students’ scores on end-of-year comprehensive exams. For example, composite scores on a battery of
such tests administered to 4th graders improved by 27% in Maryland schools in which such an
approach had been instituted in contrast to the results of a similar
group of students taught in the traditional manner. Similar improvements among those whose
instruction incorporated environmental experiences in the instruction of the
basic curriculums were observed among middle and high school students in
urban, suburban and rural communities across the country. Those are
the same type of tests being administered by State Departments of Education as
part of the "Leave No Child Behind" program to evaluate the
overall performance by schools throughout the United States. (State Departments of
Education are using these scores to determine the amounts of financial
assistance going to the public schools in their system. Within many school districts, including North Carolinaa, teacher salaries and job
security now depend to a large extent on how well their students perform on those
state administered tests.) Furthermore these studies are showing that the
students in those integrated programs retain information for a longer duration
and, perhaps of greater importance, can more effectively apply
the knowledge that they are taught. In
addition, this approach of incorporating ecological
field experiences into curriculums also improves discipline and reduces
absenteeism because the students are more interested in what is being taught.
The
above findings are a strong endorsement of Congressman Charles Taylor's
efforts, through the USDA Forest Service, to provide public and private
school educators with more training in environmental science. This gives
teachers and administrators the tools to assist them to integrate environmental
experiences into their classes. Hence the objective,
scientifically based ecological knowledge and techniques
being offered through the Pisgah Forest and Keystone College
Environmental Education Institutes, both of which receive Forest Service
support, could serve as models for programs that help schools across the United States to generate more
effectively educated students. Our country needs more knowledgeable
and skilled citizens in order to effectively compete in the changing world
marketplace.
PFI
has decided to postpone offering its Earth/Environmental Science for Middle and
High School Teachers via distance learning until the Fall,
2005. That was necessitated by the
need to change the delivery platform from Blackboard to a web-based
Dream Weaver system. Also it
is hoped that by next September Brevard College will be fully connected to the
"computer super highway" that currently is available in Western North Carolina. The latter would facilitate the transmission
of the large data sets that are part of the lessons being prepared to the
participating educators. AmeriCorps- supported PFI Distance Learning Coordinator
Elizabeth Kampouris is making significant progress in
compiling the subject matter. She has
been aided by Dick Hilliard, a recently retired Master Teacher in the
Henderson County School System, who has provided innovative instructional
materials.
The
new PFI "Wonders of Weather" workshop was oversubscribed. Participants included public school teachers , home-schooling instructors as well as camp
counselors who teach environmental subject matter. Several of the Institute's summer courses are
full; others are rapidly filling. However
there still are opportunities to enroll. To check on openings call
(828) 884-8229 or e-mail pfi@brevard.edu.
PFI’s website is located at www.brevard.edu/pfi.
KceeI has been very busy the past two weeks planning and conducting meetings
for the 2005 summer courses. KceeI is receiving registrations from attendees
continually. The Forest Stewardship and
Watershed Concepts courses are at 50 percent capacity, and the Geology of
Northeastern Pennsylvania course is at 85 percent capacity. The brochure may be viewed at KceeI’s website in a printable Adobe PDF form (http://www.kceei.keystone.edu/Workshops.htm).
On
Tuesday, February 22nd, KceeI staff met
with selected presenters who participated in the 2004 Watershed Concepts
workshop. These included Angela Lambert,
DCNR Lackawanna State Park, Environmental Education Specialist; Dr. Robert Cook, Keystone College
Assistant Professor; and Tim Eichner, Director of the Willary Water Resource Center, as well as Howard Jennings,
Director of KceeI, and Deanna Haluska, Operations Coordinator of
KceeI. They
reviewed the 2004 Watershed Concepts course and made adjustments to the
tentative schedule for 2005. The group
also made suggestions for educational resources, and proposed new delivery
techniques for some of the topics presented.
KceeI has recently formed an advisory committee that met on Wednesday,
February 23rd. The committee
is composed of a representative from a local sawmill, a representative from
Congressman Sherwood’s Office; the Supervisor of Curriculum and Instruction
from the Scranton School District; an Environmental Education Specialist from
the DCNR Lackawanna State Park; the Center Coordinator of the Mid-Atlantic
Center for Urban and Community Forestry, USDA Forest Service, NA Keystone
College; the Deputy Superintendent from the NPS Delaware Water Gap National
Recreation Area; the Vice-President/Dean of Keystone College; and the Assistant
Executive Director of NEIU-19. KceeI served 25 teachers in its pilot year and anticipates
serving approximately 100 teachers in 2005.
Howard Jennings explained that the challenge as KceeI
grows will be to maintain and enhance the quality of the courses/workshops
provided to educators through KceeI’s first
year. He also stated the goals of the advisory
committee: to help facilitate quality growth, suggest marketing strategies,
help identify educational materials, community resources, and to recommend
potential new courses, workshops, and activities that are appropriate within
the grant parameters. KceeI received excellent and valuable input from members of
the group. This group will meet again in
late September after the 2005 courses.
On
Thursday, February 24th, KceeI staff met
with Dr. Robert Cook, Assistant Professor, Keystone College and Dr. Jerry Skinner,
Associate Professor, Keystone College to review the tentative
course schedule for the Geology of Northeastern Pennsylvania course. They are researching possible keynote
speakers for the opening evening. They
are also in the early days of field-trip planning. Tentatively, two days of the workshops will
be dedicated to guided, hands-on tours of geologic sites of Northeastern Pennsylvania. More planning and meetings are planned to
further enhance the courses.
KceeI’s website is located at www.kceei.keystone.edu.
Brevard College
Brevard AAM has been working hard on updating its website to reflect the three
workshop series that are now being offered in its service area. These series are “Empowering your Students
with Visual Literacy”, “Creating Rich Learning Experiences”, and “Digital
Storytelling”. The new web pages give an
overview of each workshop series, including the timeframe, CEUs,
and incentives.
In addition, Brevard AAM is also beginning to plan summer institute workshops that will be
offered in the AAM lab on campus.
At this time, six different workshop series will potentially be offered
including Digital Storytelling Level II (five sessions), Empowering your
Students with Visual Literacy, Creating Rich Learning Experiences, A Story to
be Told (Gathering your Community’s Stories), The Library of Congress for the
Media Specialist, and History Firsthand: Primary Sources for the Social Studies
Teacher.
Ongoing digital storytelling
workshops at Rugby Middle
School and
in the AAM lab at Brevard College are close to completion, as participants work hard to
gather all of their images and write their scripts for their final
stories. Also, check out past digital
storytelling workshop participants’ digital stories, which can now be viewed on
the website below.
Upcoming workshops scheduled
for the spring semester include digital storytelling at Rosman Elementary
School in
March and Creating Rich Learning Experiences at Saluda School in March and April.
Brevard’s AAM program website is located at: http://www.brevard.edu/aam/.
Mars Hill College
Digital storytelling, the AAM program focus at Mars Hill College, continues its high demand in area schools. The staff has recently completed the workshop
series at nearby Mars Hill Elementary and at Bethel Elementary in Haywood County. The on-campus
class will hold its final session on February 26. As these classes finish up, two more
workshops are beginning at Weaverville Primary
School and
Burnsville Elementary.
The teachers produced a
number of excellent stories. Mars Hill’s
Desarae Kirkpatrick and Kathy Fifer created a story
about sod houses that used many photographs from the Library of Congress
collection, “The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920”. Many of these black-and-white photographs,
taken by Fred Hultstrand, were hand-tinted, giving
the digital story a unique feel.
At Bethel Elementary, AAM alum Diane Williamson and her partner Cherry Blaylock created a story
that works for all grades. They told the
story of the Pledge of Allegiance and what it really means. They used pictures of their own students and
drew heavily from the LOC’s September 11,
2001 Documentary
Project.
Fourth grade teachers Lynne
Garrett and Debbie Reese developed a digital story about the Wright Brothers
from the point of view of their sister, Katharine Wright. Again drawing on the LOC resources, they used
many photographs, sketches, and even blueprints submitted with patent
applications to tell the story of Katharine’s older brothers.
At Mitchell High
School, Dr.
Ed Shearin and AnneMarie
Walter visited Robin Lance-Brown’s Spanish class to observe digital stories
created by students. An essential skill
in language fluency is the ability to give and understand directions. When Robin attended the digital storytelling
workshops last summer, she immediately saw this application. Her Spanish III and IV students presented
their digital stories (created in PowerPoint) giving directions around the
campus and to Mexican restaurants in the area.
On February 4, MHC/AAM hosted a focus group of WNC school librarians. The purpose of the focus group was to examine
the many roles of the school librarians and to determine ways to support
trained AAM teachers in the classroom. The focus group suggested that one role of
the school librarian is that of collaborator with the teacher. This was echoed during a video conference
between the LOC and the focus group. Judy Graves, Gail Petri, and Betty Brown suggested that there is
a strong link between the school librarian and the classroom teacher. Gail Petri introduced her new book, The American Memory Collection: Primary
Resource Activities Across the Curriculum, an excellent resource to
generate ideas on using primary resources in the curriculum. MHC/AAM will
be using this school librarian focus group as an advisory committee to suggest
ideas ways to serve the classroom teacher and to provide support. MHC/AAM will be facilitating a special workshop series of digital storytelling
for school librarians beginning March 29.
This series will emphasize the school librarian role as a pathfinder and
collaborator with the classroom teacher to improve student learning using
American Memory primary resources.
Mars Hill’s AAM program website is located at: http://www.aam.mhc.edu/.
Montreat College
The Montreat Partner is
busily conducting Phase II workshops. On February 15th, 13 teachers
at Owen Middle
School
completed the 18-hour foundations workshop series and shared positive comments
on their evaluations. Many of the teachers expressed how much they enjoyed the
series and how they are readily using the skills learned. Seven teachers at W.D. Williams Elementary
are making their way through the advanced level of digital storytelling and
participated in the Gathering Your Community’s Stories video conference session
with the LOC on February 7th.
Teachers at Erwin High School will begin the digital storytelling series on March 1st,
and teachers at Pleasant Gardens Elementary will begin the same series on March
3rd.
The Montreat Partner has
begun an initiative to bring the LOC’s resources to
the attention of Montreat College faculty. In January, the LOCATE Newsletter made its debut. The goal of the newsletter is to
highlight six different collections for six suggested subject areas to provide
resource links to college faculty at a glance and to introduce what the LOC has
to offer educators and students. The February edition went out the first week
of the month and the newsletter has a planned release for March, April, and May.
During the spring, a simple questionnaire will be sent to the faculty to
inquire about their thoughts and comments towards the newsletter. Montreat’s president, library staff, and director of
communications support this venture and have sent Wendy Fusco encouraging and
positive feedback. A video conference with the LOC is planned for April, with
open seating for college faculty and library staff who
wish to learn more about the LOC Web site and resources through a hands-on
session. This is the first step in developing a Phase III initiative at Montreat College.
Montreat’s AAM program website is located at: http://aam.montreat.edu/
Western Carolina University
The WCU-AAM program is actively into Phase II activities. Currently,
workshops are being held in four schools and another school begins the
series in April. An entire school system will participate in the
basic 15-hour AAM training in July. Ten more schools are
developing schedules with their teachers, and it is anticipated
that workshops will begin in these schools within the next four
months.
Each teacher participating in
the 15-hour series will develop one activity using LOC primary sources and
local primary sources that they will use in their classrooms. These
will be shared during the last workshop of the series.
WCU is also developing a
15-hour series for university faculty that will target using the LOC primary
sources in their teaching and modeling use of these sources to their teacher
education students. Workshops will be held on campus and will target the
fields of mathematics, science, language arts, social studies, fine arts, and
elementary education methods and their use of primary sources in teaching at
all levels (elementary, middle, high school, and college).
The lesson plan database
evaluation process continues and one lesson plan a week will be uploaded,
starting in March.
WCU’s AAM program website is located at: http://aam.wcu.edu.
California University of Pennsylvania
AAM Workshops
Washington School
District
1/26/05 – 5 teachers attended the Digital Storytelling
Process workshop. This was the fifth
workshop presented to Washington School District teachers.
2/9/05 – 7 teachers attended the Local History in the
Classroom: Oral Histories and Local Primary Resources workshop. This was the sixth workshop presented to Washington School
District
teachers.
Canon-McMillan School
District
2/10/05 – 14 teachers attended the What Are Primary Resources workshop.
This is the second AAM workshop presented at Canon-McMillan.
Bentworth School
District
2/11/05 - 21 teachers from various grade levels visited the
California University of PA campus to attend two AAM workshops: “Introduction to the Library of Congress
and American Memory Online Primary Resources” and “What are Primary Resources”. Byron Holdiman, digital preservationist, led the workshops. This was Bentworth’s
first participation in AAM and this is the first school district to come to California University’s campus for AAM instruction.
California School
District
1/25/05 – 2 teachers attended the Digital Storytelling
Process workshop. This was the sixth
workshop presented in the California
school district.
Integrating AAM into California University of Pennsylvania
In honor of Black History
Month, Byron Holdiman has compiled a list of LOC
online resources dedicated to African American history. The list of electronic
resources is available on California University’s AAM Web site under the Monthly Feature section.
Community Outreach
On February 9th,
2005, 13 social studies
teachers from the Washington County Curriculum Coordinators group attended an
Introduction to the Library of Congress and American Memory Online Primary
Resources workshop. The workshop was
delivered at the Washington Area Career Technology Center.
Department of Library
Services and Public Libraries
Eight staff members of California University’s Manderino Library
attended a one-hour professional development workshop presented by AAM Director Michael Brna. The presentation included an update about AAM at California University followed by an introduction to the LOC Web site. The presentation was designed specifically
for librarians. It highlighted the
digital resources available to librarians and how the digital resources could
be leveraged by library staff and faculty to benefit student patrons, support
faculty research, support the university community, and extend beyond the
campus into the surrounding communities and public libraries. One immediate result of the workshop was that
Loring Prest, Manderino Library Electronic Resources librarian, added the
LOC’s Online Virtual Reference Shelf link to the
library’s Search Engines and Web Directories resource link.
Other
Byron Holdiman
has added a new Monthly Feature to
the California University AAM website.
Monthly Feature is a subject
specific collection of LOC online resources, which focuses on nationally
recognized monthly themes. At month’s
end, the resource lists will be archived and remain accessible to
visitors.
CUP’s AAM program website is located at: http://www.cup.edu/education/aam.
Waynesburg College
The WC AAM staff is preparing for a busy spring schedule. Following a brief
presentation to Uniontown department chairs on February 1, the team was invited
to conduct workshops in the district on February 25, March 24, and April 29.
Approximately 24 teachers will attend the Introduction workshop and 15 of these
teachers will go on to complete the Mining for Memories, Digging Deeper, and
Mapping Memories workshops.
Two additional districts,
Carmichaels and Central Greene, are scheduled for a March 4 workshop. Dr.
Canning will lead the Central Greene workshop, “Writing Local History”. She
will be supported by Jessica Sachet, an education major. Dr. Canning is
developing curriculum that blends local history with LOC primary source
documents. She is focusing on writing projects to entice English teachers to
participate. The AAM team is working with Central Greene administrators and teachers to
develop a team of teachers that will engage students in documenting local
history over the next school year.
Eventually, the students’ work will be published on the Web.
Barbara Kirby and Bonnie Ordonez
will conduct concurrent workshops in the Carmichaels district with Amy
Martin and Kristin Antill. The Carmichaels workshops will be the first time that the WC AAM staff has worked with elementary school teachers in large numbers. To
engage the elementary teachers, Dr. Canning developed a project that blends
portraits of U.S. Presidents from the LOC with a song to the tune of
“Ten Little Indians” that names the presidents. Education professor Frank Pazzinski played the music and his fourth grade daughter Addie sang the tune.
The AAM staff continues to work with the local Main Street project, “Waynesburg Prosperous & Beautiful”,
to develop community histories. Undergraduate students enrolled in a Service
Learning class are researching historic Waynesburg buildings. Their research
will be used in a workshop that blends local history with national history
primary source documents available at the LOC.
Amy Martin, digital preservationist, continues to search the college
museum and library holdings for local primary source documents of interest. AAM staff members are collaborating with WC Media Services to create a
digital archive of local primary source documents. The documents are hosted on
the WC media server, http://wcmedia.waynesburg.edu.
Digitized periodicals include:
- Caldwell's Illustrated Centennial Atlas of Greene County Pennsylvania 1876
The Waynesburg Republican – Centennial Edition
- Waynesburg Republican – Greene County Soldier’s
Edition
- The Waynesburg Semi-Weekly Messenger – Trade and
Industrial Edition
- The Women’s Centennial
Additionally, Ann Canning,
Amy Martin and Jessica Sachet have been working to develop indexes and PDF
bookmarks to facilitate student research.
Waynesburg’s AAM program website is located at: http://aam.waynesburg.edu.
University of South
Carolina Upstate
USC Upstate AAM Director Bob
Pettis presented at the
Florida Educational Technology Conference January 26-28th. Dr. Pettis'
presentation, "The National Digital Library Collections of the Library of
Congress" was attended by over 150 conference participants.
Another winter workshop
series has begun with the Spartanburg District Seven Schools.
Twenty-five participants were so excited with their introduction to the
Instructional Use of Primary Sources that Dr. Pettis was inundated with phone
calls and emails the next day from their colleagues who wanted to get into
the class. It's wonderful to see the teachers excited about the AAM workshops.
USC Upstate is sad to lose
Lynn Sellers, program administrative assistant. Lynn has taken a full-time position with Spartanburg
District 5 Schools.
USCS’s AAM program website is located at:
http://www.uscupstate.edu/academics/education/adventure_mind.asp.
Home School Program
AAM Home School Staff
The AAM Home School Program welcomes Bonnie R. Jensen as the AAM Home School curriculum developer. Bonnie has a wide range of
experiences which have prepared her for this position. She has been a classroom
teacher, reading specialist, as well as curriculum specialist at the elementary
and middle school levels. Her background in marketing and as a learning
consultant for major corporations such as Xerox Corporation and Johnson &
Johnson will help with the expansion of the AAM Home School Program to home school educators nationwide. Bonnie holds
a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of South Florida, and a master’s degree in curriculum and teaching
from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Presentations
Pam Johnson presented an overview of the AAM Home School program to the Haywood Christian Home Educators on
January 17 at the Haywood County Public Library in Waynesville, NC. Some of the parents had participated in the past and
were very excited about the many changes that have been made to the lessons.
One home school family drove from Franklin, NC to hear about the program and was thrilled to hear
the lessons are available online from their home computer.
New Student Work
Home school students have
been busy creating new projects during January, with more than 45 posted during
that time. Highlighted student projects
this month are:
Ben’s
Election Process: aamhomeschool.org/spr_05/Ben_index77.htm
Ashley’s
Presidents: aamhomeschool.org/spr_05/AshleyPresidents_files/frame.htm
Isothermal Community College – Columbus Campus
AAM Home School computer lab time began on February 7 at the Columbus campus of Isothermal Community
College.
Home educators in Polk County are pleased to have this opportunity much closer to
home. Cheryl Lawter, the AAM Home School lab assistant, has been working with the IT staff at Isothermal Community
College to
prepare the lab for the students. The
classes will be held every Monday afternoon from 1:00 to 4:00 until May 23.
The Home School’s AAM program website is located at: http://www.aamhomeschool.org/.