The Pisgah
Forest Institute (PFI) is pleased to relate that Jeanne Braha, a graduate
student of Dr. Chad Oliver at the Yale University School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies, will be presenting a lecture and discussion
on applications of virtual technology involving forest ecology. A select group of Dr. Oliver’s students,
including Ms. Braha, have been getting feedback from PFI staff on how best to
integrate their technology into K - 12 classrooms. Using the computer
software developed at Yale, students will be able to see in ten year
intervals extending more than 100 years the impacts of selective harvesting,
fires, diseases and a variety of other anthropogenic and "natural"
impacts on the growth and development of real forests. Yale amassed
information on the composition by species and location of trees in a wide
variety of forests from throughout the world. This pedagogical application of
the technology, which also is employed in the commercial management of forests,
gives students a much clearer understanding of how and why woodlands
develop.
Ms. Braha's
presentation, which has been scheduled for 7:30 PM on July 20 to enable students
enrolled in PFI's "Overview of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) I" (July
17-19) and "Intermediate GIS" (July
20-22) to
attend, is open to the general public. (There still are some openings in these
two workshops. To obtain more information as well as enroll, go to the
Institute's website, www.brevard.edu/pfi.) The lecture,
will be brought to the attention of USDA and State of North Carolina Forest Services employees as well as owners of
private forested areas. The location of the lecture will be announced at a
later date.
The interactions among Yale
and PFI staff, which have been mutually beneficial, is another example of
meaningful cooperation between programs financially supported in part by
the Environmental Research Consortium of the Western Carolinas (ERC).
The PFI
staff expresses its appreciation to Dr. Sonna Lyda, the Superintendent of the
Transylvania School System, and her staff for once again making it possible to
use one of their activity buses to transport students and
instructors involved in PFI's summer 2005 workshops. Without that
assistance, the costs of putting on those courses would be considerably
higher.
This summer
a teacher from the Bahamas will be enrolled in four of PFI's
offerings. She will be the third international educator to participate
in courses offered by the Institute. In the recent past teachers from Panama and Brazil also have attended.
PFI’s
website is located at www.brevard.edu/pfi.
It has been
an extremely busy week at KceeI in regards to planning for next year and
training a new Operations Coordinator. The
staff has been ordering materials for the courses, fine-tuning the sessions
within each course, and continuing the ongoing correspondence with attendees
and presenters of the courses.
Keystone
will be participating in the 20th Annual Envirothon on May 18th. The Envirothon is a fun, academic event
allowing area students to learn more and compete in the following subject
areas: aquatics, forestry, wildlife, soil & land use, and current
issues. The local Envirothon is just one
in the nation that challenges students to think critically about the natural
world and their role in it. It begins
with classroom study and outdoor experiences that help students get to know the
great forces of nature—aquatics, soil, forests and wildlife. It is a very
exciting, hands-on event. Students will
discover how the choices they make bring about consequences for all of the
other elements of the natural world.
Students may also discover how human activities affect the local
climate… which then affects the number and type of trees that grow in area
forests… which then affects the kind and number of wildlife that lives there,
the quality of water in the streams, and the purity of the air… which then
affects the ability of humans to use the forest for hunting, hiking and
boating, industry and economic benefit.
After students understand how one event in nature affects many others,
they may be asked to decide:
What does this tree
tell us about the health of the forest and whether or not it should be
timbered?
How much pollution is
industry adding to the stream and is this amount acceptable in light of the
benefits, such as jobs, that the industry adds to the community?
Is this particular
piece of land the best place to build a new shopping center?
Team
members consist of five students in grades 9-12. They can represent ecology clubs, scout
troops, 4H groups, home-study students, traditional high school classes or any
combination of interests or backgrounds. In the Lackawanna and Wyoming counties Envirothon held on
Keystone’s Campus, members of the winning team from each county will receive a
scholarship of $1000 to Keystone College for the Fall semester. Now that’s an incentive!
The
Environmental Forum concluded on May 9th with final presentations
and a luncheon. The seventeen teams of
students and teachers represented twelve school districts: Elk Lake, Mid-Valley, Montrose, Mountain View, NEIU Learning Center, Old Forge, Riverside, Valley View, West Scranton, Western Wayne Middle School, Wayne Highlands-Honesdale High,
and Western Wayne High School.
They concluded their year-long study with displays and presentations on
scientific, historical, recreational, geological, and ecological aspects of the
watershed.
Howard
Jennings, Director of KceeI, would like to thank Deanna Haluska for a fantastic year. She was instrumental in KceeI being
successful its first year. Her focus,
organization, and persistence have been invaluable. She has accepted a position at the
Susquehanna County Conservation District as the West Nile Virus
Coordinator. Thanks Deanna and good
luck!
KceeI would
like to welcome aboard Nora Dillon. She
comes to KceeI with a variety of experiences in the environmental arena. She is a 2003 graduate of Ithaca College and earned a degree in
Environmental Studies. She is
enthusiastic to be part of the KceeI team and can’t wait to start picking up
where Deanna left off and planning for the future.
The Keystone College campus is hustling and bustling at
the end of the Spring semester. This is always a special time of year with the
campus looking so beautiful and spectacular for graduation on May 21st.
Just a
reminder…
KceeI’s
website is located at www.kceei.keystone.edu.
Barat Education Foundation
The new
group of Barat American Memory Teacher Scholars has been selected. Eight teachers have been selected to
concentrate on developing Illinois specific projects, across all K-12
grade levels, using the Library of Congress (LOC) resources. This group of projects will be available in
paper as well as online to facilitate use in those schools that don’t have
great access to technology.
The Barat
Teacher Scholars orientation began with a hand-off from the 2004-2005
group. It was a festive evening during
which the initial scholars described their experiences and shared the work
their students had completed with the LOC.
It was extremely rewarding to see the LOC primary source documents
integrated into student work samples.
Barat AAM staff members are currently signing
registrations for their three-day summer workshops entitled “Fostering American
Memory in a Digital Age”. The summer
series introduces the LOC and builds technology skills including online search,
digital photography, and digital storytelling.
Staff members are hoping to have almost 100 teachers complete basic
training during the summer.
Barat’s AAM program website is located at: www.americanmemory.org.
Federation of Independent Illinois Colleges and Universities
(FIICU)
The
Federation of Independent Illinois Colleges and Universities continues its work
in AAM’s Phase III program, which focuses
exclusively on faculty education. This
spring, FIICU welcomed Knox College as a partner. Continuing partners are National-Louis University, Bradley University, Dominican University, Greenville College Illinois, Wesleyan University, Knox College, and McKendree College.
FIICU’s AAM program website is located at:
http://www.aamprogram.org/introduction/aam_partners_detail.aspx?id=18.
Governors State University
On March 6th,
the third Phase I group of teachers completed their course. The projects posted by this group were
exceptional. In a short year, the Phase
I and III alumni now number 87.
As a
follow-up for the alumni, GSU has invited teachers to participate in a
three-day workshop on digital storytelling.
The session will be held the last week in July and will be taught by Dr.
Ed Shearin and AnneMarie Walter, who represent the AAM program at Mars Hill College in North Carolina.
Within two days of extending the invitation, the section was
filled. It seems that the alumni are a
dedicated group who are willing to give of their time to learn more. The only incentive for attending is getting
Pinnacle software to create their digital stories.
On April 2nd,
Luci Sweder, Joy Rogers, Cindy Rich, and Sandi Estep presented at the ASCD
National Conference in Orlando.
The 90-minute session was very well received. An assistant superintendent from Ohio shouted across the room as he was
leaving, “This was the best darn session that I have attended at this entire
conference.” The evaluations of the
session were very positive. An
application has been made to repeat the session at ASCD’s 2006 national
conference in Chicago.
In
mid-April, Luci Sweder and Sandi Estep turned their attention to preparing for
the AAM Director’s Meeting. A great deal of preparation went into the
planning for being the emcees of the meeting and for weaving their tips and
tricks to energize AAM courses and presentations.
Judging by the post-meeting evaluations, it appears that their efforts
were appreciated by the group.
Planning
for the 2005-2006 school year has begun.
A meeting was held with local school administrators to begin lining up
participants for fall 2005 and winter 2006.
Further, invitations were sent to those who were wait-listed a year ago.
GSU-AAM is proud to report that alumnae
Susan Duran was chosen to participate in Tech 2005 in Springfield at the Illinois State Capitol. Illinois invites tech-savvy teachers and a
small group of their students to present to Illinois state representatives and
senators.
During the
last week in April and first week in May, GSU hosted its first Phase III
session. Fifty hours of instruction were
provided during the two-week session.
The participants will be meeting again in a few weeks to present their
completed projects. Fourteen professors,
one division chairs, and two deans participated. Luci and Sandi stated that the
pressure was on to deliver a phenomenal training session due to the credentials
of the group they were teaching. The
approach was entirely different for the university-level participants than for
K-12 teachers. One of the differences in
training university level personnel as opposed to K-12 teachers was how WebCT
and Elluminate were incorporated into their sessions. Since only one professor was a current user
of WebCT and Elluminate, it became a goal to show the professor how they could
incorporate using these tools in their instructional design. Elluminate sessions were held online and
professors were each given the opportunity to moderate the session.
In between
all this, a very exciting workshop got underway for the GSU Alternative
Certification program. GSU was the first
Alt. Cert. program in the nation to be federally funded, and the Department of
Education has had the school serve as the national model. AAM fits so nicely with GSU’s desire to
make degreed individuals (just not in education) the best teachers
possible. Therefore, the workshop training
series has started with 30 adults in the Alt. Cert. program. It is rewarding to see two federally funded
programs being able to serve one another’s needs.
On a
related note, of the 60 Phase I alumni, three of the teachers who participated
had gained their teaching credentials through the GSU Alt. Cert program. Although many, including Dr. Estep, are
skeptical of the shortened teacher education preparation – as opposed to the
customary four-year teacher preparation program – the caliber of these three
would indicate that their skepticism is unfounded. The three were each at the top of their AAM class and worked far above and
beyond minimal requirements.
Governors State’s AAM program website is located at: http://aam.govst.edu/.
Loyola University
Loyola is
developing a CD for distribution to all high school social studies teachers in
the Chicago Public Schools in which primary source American Memory items, as
well as illustrative Learning Page and AAM lessons, are linked to the official
Course Framework for Chicago's schools. There are more than 100 high schools in the Chicago system aligned to the same
curriculum. Initial distribution is
planned during a fall 2005 conference, which will also feature resources on the
Holocaust.
Loyola’s AAM website is located at: http://www.luc.edu/schools/education/aam/index.shtml.
Eastern Illinois University
EIU AAM continues to present workshops at
East Central Illinois schools. Four
schools recently completed the AAM basic workshop series of a minimum of 15 hours. They are Arcola Elementary, Arcola High,
Charleston Middle, and Martinsville Elementary.
Thirty-three teachers from Oblong district attended a 3.5-hour
introduction. Teachers at all levels
were represented and all were enthusiastically engaged. Workshops have been scheduled with new
schools beginning this summer.
Another
project that is keeping EIU AAM busy is a partnership with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential
Museum. EIU AAM has created a website that will be
unveiled soon that provides teachers with an introduction to LOC American
Memory primary sources and information on how to access, search, and use the
items. This site focuses on the exhibits
of the museum, but the goal is to introduce teachers to the vast resources that
can be used throughout their curriculum.
EIU AAM Director Cindy Rich will be presenting workshops on site at the Museum
and Library to teachers from throughout the state of Illinois.
In June she will be joined by Lola Pyne of the LOC and in August by
Elizabeth Ridgway of the LOC.
The EIU AAM Newsletter is on “summer vacation”
and will return in July. Themes are
being selected that are pertinent to Illinois teachers. The EIU AAM website is currently being
redesigned to provide easier access to information and to reflect the evolution
of the program. The site continues to
receive many hits, with the newsletter receiving 1,008 from almost 250 visitors
since its introduction in October 2004.
In all, 3,017 different visitors have visited the EIU AAM Web site 9,156 times. The goal of EIU AAM is to be a personal resource as
well as an Internet tool.
EIU’s AAM program website is located at: http://www.eiu.edu/~eiuaam/.
Illinois State University
WOW sums up
the month of April for the ISU-AAM program!
Director Rick Satchwell and Digital Preservationist Judy Bee attended
the April AAM Director’s Meeting held in Washington, D.C. This was Bee’s first national AAM meeting, which allowed her to
participate in LOC orientation sessions.
Satchwell was elected to the Directors Meeting Planning Committee to
plan the September 2005 meeting in Chicago.
As soon as
Satchwell and Bee returned from DC, they presented their professional development
opportunities to the media specialists from their local Unit 5 School District
at the Unit Office and the superintendents from Region #17 at a meeting held at
the Regional Office of Education in Normal. The response was positive in both
meetings and resulted in a number of registrations for the scheduled summer
institutes. During the meeting with the media specialists from Unit 5,
Satchwell and Bee were able to openly discuss the needs of the media specialist
and collaboration with teachers. They echoed the comments and suggestions of
other media specialists to include this group within the professional
development opportunities offered to teachers. They felt that collaborative
professional development would offer more opportunities to work with teachers
from their buildings. ISU-AAM looks forward to a similar discussion with media
specialists from the local Bloomington District 87.
On April
22, ISU-AAM hosted its first professional
development opportunity at Milner Library. Eight teachers and one school
librarian participated in the first of a four-part training session. This group
will return to Milner and join about 20 other teachers for the remaining
sessions during the first week of June.
The ISU-AAM website continues to grow with new
resources for teachers and minor changes to the information presented.
Satchwell and Bee worked with programmers from Milner’s Systems Department to
make minor changes to enhance the web-based scheduling program. The program is
working well and allows administrators to view the ISU-AAM workshop availability as well as
tentatively schedule presentations and professional development workshops.
Satchwell
and Bee worked with the College of Education to secure a course number and title
for the graduate credit offered to participants through the Extended University
Office. The course has been titled “Integrating Digital Primary Resources
Across the K-12 Curriculum”. This will be a real bonus for participants.
The Digitization Center at Milner Library has created many
opportunities. Satchwell met with the curator of the International Children’s
Art Collection in April and received approval to digitize this collection. Bee
and Satchwell continue to work in partnership with the Mclean County History Museum to digitize its Native American
collection and to create standards-based activities that introduce the ways of
this indigenous people. Bee and
Satchwell will submit a proposal for this project to the Illinois State Library
by June 17. This project/partnership will build capacity for the Center and
lead to future collaborations with the museum. Satchwell continues to work on
the equipment list and renovation plans for the Center, as well as proposals to
secure some of this equipment via external funds.
The ISU-AAM staff found some time to spiff up
the office walls by printing some full-size panoramic images of some local
sites such as downtown Bloomington in 1914, a local park pavilion (Miller Park)
in 1910, and the campus of Illinois State University as it appeared through the
camera lens of the Haines Photo Co. on July 29, 1914. Participants from the
first all-day workshop found many useful primary source materials from the LOC.
The ISU-AAM staff look forward to a productive
May. Scheduled presentations include an introduction to the program to the
media specialists from District 87, as well as the principals from Unit 5.
Registrations have closed for the first two summer institutes (May 31-June 3
and June 6-9) and Satchwell and Bee look forward to full registrations for their
June 27-30 and July 11-14 institutes. The national AAM office strives to have each partner
train 300 teachers per year. By the end of July, the ISU-AAM partner will be well on the way to
reaching this goal and will have trained more than 120 teachers.
ISU’s AAM program website is located at: http://www.mlb.ilstu.edu/aam.
Southern Illinois
University-Carbondale
The SIU-C AAM program concluded its workshop
series at Carbondale Community High School.
The workshop series continues for teachers in the Pinckneyville Community High School and two groups in Cairo.
One group consists of elementary teachers, and the other of middle and
high school teachers. That series
continues into June.
SIU-C AAM is presenting a videoconference with the LOC during the summer, and
all AAM pre-service, in-service, and
workshop participants have been invited.
Additionally, SIU-C AAM will offer two FrontPage sessions for these same groups and
its Summer MAT cohort.
The AAM staff is finalizing the course
syllabus for EDUC 550: An Adventure of the American Mind. The three-hour graduate level course, for the
Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) cohort, begins in June.
AAM staff members continue consultation with public school administrators
about additional workshops in participating schools, and about establishing
workshop activities in additional schools.
SIU-C’s AAM program website is located at: http://aam.siu.edu/.
Southern Illinois
University-Edwardsville
The second
cohort of teachers in Phase I have completed all AAM requirements, including mentoring
and implementation of created curricula.
As lessons are vetted and made ADA compliant, they will be online at www.siue.edu/education/aam/lesson.htm. The development of course materials for the
Master of Arts in Teaching program began this month.
Tuetopolis School District has completed another basic
workshop series in April. The district
selected 20 teachers from elementary, middle, and high school grades who teach
social studies/history and language arts/literature. Three librarian/media specialists also participated. Another workshop will be planned to for
fall. Through evaluations, the
practicality of the workshop, hands-on time, and time for curricula development
is most appreciated. These lessons will also be online after vetting and
compliancy issues are met (www.siue.edu/education/aam/lesson.htm).
A meeting
was held in late April with the assistant superintendent and technical
coordinator of O’Fallon School District, which will be planning workshops with AAM this fall in order to reach their
goal of having teachers use more Internet resources like the LOC as part of
their curriculum. In June, basic AAM workshops and one advanced workshop
are scheduled for North Wamac School District in Centralia and for the teachers in
Montgomery/Christian Regional Office of Education, which will be held in
Litchfield. Workshop recruitment for the
following school year in underserved areas will be a strong focus this month
for the AAM team.
SIU-E’s AAM program website is located at: http://www.siue.edu/education/aam.
Metropolitan State College of Denver
AAM-Colorado prepares to wrap up a busy spring semester and looks forward
to moving into summer with three week-long primary source workshop series
scheduled for June and July. AAM-Colorado welcomes new school districts Douglas County and Englewood to its list of participating
districts.
Three-day Digital Alchemy workshop sessions are scheduled for June and
July. AAM-Colorado's Digital Alchemy
(formerly called Digital Storytelling) starts with documenting oral histories
(biographies), creating digital audio or video files from these accounts, and
combining them with primary sources and turning them into gold (or even an
elixir of longevity). Participants can tie local news to national primary
sources, and interweave them with personal or family events, memories, and
histories. Veterans, survivors of the Dust Bowl, survivors of the ‘60s,
musicians, and survivors of the millennium change are all examples of the people
who can create an oral history as a starting point. More information is
available on AAM-Colorado’s Digital Alchemy page at http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu/digalchemy.htm.
AAM-Colorado is accepting proposals for
Learning Activities Development projects to be created in August 2005. Learning
Activities Development will bring teams of Colorado K-12 content experts
together to create learning activities incorporating primary sources and other
educational elements to accomplish stated learning outcomes. Participants must
complete AAM-Colorado Workshop Series I, II, and
III before participating in Learning Activities Development, and will be
required to include a report describing and documenting how the project was
disseminated to the team’s peers. For more information, visit the AAM-Colorado Learning Activities
Development page at http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu/learnact.htm.
MSCD’s AAM program website is located at: http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu.
Quincy University
AAM welcomes Quincy University as a new partner. Located in westernmost Illinois along the Mississippi River, Quincy becomes the 10th AAM program in that state. Serving about 1,200 students annually,
Quincy is a private, Franciscan, liberal arts institution offering
undergraduate, graduate, and preprofessional programs in arts and sciences,
business administration, education, fine arts, and nursing.
Quincy is not entirely new to the AAM program. Previously, it had been a partner with the
Federation of Independent Illinois Colleges and Universities (FIICU), whose
program focuses exclusively on faculty education, known as Phase III. Quincy also offers an undergraduate
education course on using LOC primary resources in the classroom.
Dr. Ellen Crowe, the newly appointed Dean of
Education, attended the April 2005 AAM Directors Meeting in Washington, D.C., and is taking the lead on starting
up Quincy’s AAM program for in-service K-12
teachers.
Quincy’s AAM program website is located at:
http://www.aamprogram.org/introduction/aam_partners_detail.aspx?id=29.
The Center on Congress
The Center
on Congress at Indiana University joined the AAM program in the spring of 2005 as a
new partner.
The Center
on Congress at Indiana University was established in January 1999. It
developed out of Lee Hamilton's recognition during his time in the U.S. House
of Representatives of the need to improve broad public understanding of
Congress. During the course of literally
thousands of public meetings, talks at local schools, and discussions with
individuals, Congressman Hamilton became increasingly convinced that the
public's understanding of Congress was not at all commensurate with the importance
it plays in this country and was reaching an alarmingly low level.
In an
effort to address this need, The Center on Congress was established with the
goals of improving the public's understanding of Congress and increasing civic
engagement, especially among young people, as a way to strengthen basic
institutions of government. The Center encourages a balanced, realistic view of
Congress, one that see its flaws but still recognizes its central role in this
system of government, one that leads to a desire to make things better rather
than to cynicism. At the core of the Center's work is the belief that this
nation's great experiment of representative democracy has served its citizens
well for more than 200 years, but it fundamentally rests on an informed
electorate that understands its system of government and participates in its
civic life.
The Center
is nonpartisan and its goal is purely educational. Information on Congress is presented in
a variety of ways, including newspaper editorials, radio commentaries, website
resources, teaching materials, conferences, books, television spots, and
videos, and interactive learning programs for students. The Center’s website (http://congress.indiana.edu) is a repository
of information and classroom activities.
The Center
on Congress AAM project will focus on developing and disseminating resources on the
LOC’s digital collection related to civics and government, including the Thomas
site and early Congressional primary resources.
It will expand the resources of the Center on Congress and incorporate
them into those developed for the AAM project. The Center on Congress AAM project will have a nationwide
scope, although teacher training will also be offered within Indiana.
Elaine
Larson is currently working on laying the groundwork for the Center’s AAM program. Elaine attended the April 2005 Directors
Meeting in Washington, D.C., and was enthused by the group’s energy and
dynamics.
The Center
on Congress’ AAM program website is located at:
http://www.aamprogram.org/introduction/aam_partners_detail.aspx?id=28.