Kudos to Assistant Operations Coordinator Jessica Sharp who was awarded a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Graduate Fellowship through the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. This particular engineering program is ranked second in its class in the United States, which is outstanding. Jessica will initiate her masters program at that Big Ten institution in the Fall 2006. All of her colleagues at the Pisgah Forest Institute (PFI) and the faculty in the Division of Environmental Studies, Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Brevard College (BC) wish her continued success. They anticipate significant accomplishments from this future "Boiler Maker" (the term used to describe Purdue University students and graduates). Jessica initially worked at PFI as a part-time Assistant while completing her Bachelors degree at BC. She later was employed full-time during the summer. After graduating with high honors, she spent several months in Colorado. She returned to Brevard and rejoined the PFI staff on a full-time basis. 

PFI expresses its appreciation to the Progress Energy Foundation which recently paid for 24 sets of posters from the National Energy Foundation. These fact-filled, attractive teaching aids will be given to the educators attending PFI's new "Sustainability; Creating Jobs, Preventing Pollution, and Conserving Resources" workshop. "Sustainability" and "Sustainable Development" are topics which are being promoted by both the USDA Forest Service (the major financial sponsor of the PFI program) and most of the state education departments across the United States, including the North Carolina Department of Public Information. That course will be offered on June 25 - 29. Activities will include field trips to manufacturers which employ sound environmental and energy conservation practices. Those firms to be visited will include a paper products producer. Industries which depend on trees as a major part of their raw materials have been among the leaders of efforts to promote sustainable development. Another company that will be toured is a utility that generates gypsum as part of a process that removes more than 95% of the sulfur from the discharge from its smokestacks during the burning of coal. Coal is the primary fuel that this utility uses to generate electricity. The by-product gypsum is being recycled to provide nutrients in the growing of Christmas trees, a major forest industry in North Carolina. (The Tar Heel State is the second largest producer of Christmas trees in the country.) Gypsum also will be employed to accelerate the percolation of water into soils. That will reduce soil erosion, the major water pollutant in the Southeast. Other workshop activities will include two hands-on games which help educators better understand sustainability practices. These exercises can be played with students in grades 3 through 12.

At this writing enrollment had not reached the 24 student maximum but was filling rapidly. Those interested in more details about this course and/or registering should visit the Institute's website, www.brevard.edu/pfi. Those who complete this workshop will earn 3.5 continuing education units (CEUs) and Criteria 3 credits toward their North Carolina Environmental Education (NCEE) certification.      

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

The second of KceeI’s 2006 courses will take place on Wednesday, April 5^th. Amphibians and Reptiles of the Woodland Landscape is geared for educators of grades K-12. In an attempt to find out how likely teachers were to attend a one-day course during the week, KceeI decided to hold this course on a Wednesday. Twenty-one teachers will spend the day getting down and dirty with herbs and earn free Act 48 Hours. Tim Eichner, Director of the Water Resource Center and Assistant Director of KceeI, along with Dr. Jerry Skinner, Associate Keystone College Professor and Wildlife Biologist, will be the key facilitators during this one-day course.

Topic areas to be included are: habitats, metamorphosis, and terminology. Curriculum sampler activities from the PA Fish and Boat Commission, as well as outdoor field sessions will be included. Some of the free educational resources that the teachers will receive are: Voices of the Night: The Calls of Frogs – Audio CD; Let’s Hear it for the Herbs! – NWF Activity Book; Eyewitness Amphibian Video; Hands-On Herpetology – NSTA Activity Book; Golden Guides: Reptiles and Amphibians – Book; Stokes Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles – Book; Amphibians and Retiles of Pennsylvania and the Northeast – Book; PA Amphibians and Reptiles Poster Set and Book; Frogs, Snakes and Lizards Replicas; and a Frog Metamorphosis Model. Teachers will also receive an Amphibians and Reptiles Notebook.

On Friday, April 7^th, KceeI will host the NEIU-19s Instructional Program Planning Council (IPPC) meeting at the Water Resource Center from 9:00am – 12:00pm. This meeting will be followed by a luncheon catered by Keystone College Food service. The IPPC is composed of a representative from each of the twenty school districts within the NEIU-19. The committee normally meets four times a year and the primary function of this program is to provide current profiles of programs and services locally, regionally, statewide, and nationally for districts' consideration. Howard Jennings, Director of KceeI, will speak to the group about KceeI’s 2006 courses for educators. He will also share highlights of the successful 2005 courses.

With registrations still arriving, and two courses already full, KceeI looks forward to a busy summer. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and 70 degrees followed by a rainy weekend. With these conditions, the vernal pools will be in thriving with amphibians and reptiles just in time for our course on Wednesday. Happy spring!

Just a reminder…

• To view the continuous water quality monitoring sites , click on the following link: http://www.waterontheweb.org/data/index.html
• If you would like to view the Northeast, check out the live “Streaming Camera” at www.atlas.keystone.edu/video.htm
• KceeI’s brochure may be viewed at its website in a printable Adobe PDF form at http://www.kceei.keystone.edu/Documents/2006/brochure.pdf

KceeI’s website is located at www.KceeI.keystone.edu.

Pacific Forest Institute

For updated information on the Pacific Forest Institute, please visit our website at:

http://www.jessup.edu/academics/pacificforestinstitute.

ERC Broadband has entered into a strategic alliance with Carolina Software as a Service, Inc. (CSaaS). This is an exciting opportunity for both organizations as CSaaS exclusively offers Upstate South Carolina customers ERC Broadband co-location and data centers services in conjunction with CSaaS products and services. CSaaS is located in Campobello, SC and is an established provider of hosted, “Web-native” solutions and offers unparalleled complete software solutions based on industry standard platforms at an affordable price. The company recently co-located equipment in ERC Broadband’s Asheville, NC point of presence (PoP) to utilize its disaster recovery interface, fiber backbone and secure facility. CSaaS was a finalist for the 2005 Innovision Technology award and was identified as one of the “Top 25 under 25” companies in the Upstate. You can learn more by visiting www.csaas.com.

Hunter M. Goosmann has been named General Manager of ERC Broadband. He has been serving since November 2004 as Director of Network Operations. During his tenure the fiber network and services have grown in size and scope. The North and South fiber rings in Asheville have been completed, fiber has been built to UNC-Asheville and AB Technical Community College’s Enka campus, negotiations for leased fiber to Hickory were successfully concluded, and disaster recovery services have been developed. Through Advantage West grants fiber was built to Marshall and equipment was purchased in Cullowhee resulting in service to Mars Hill College and Western Carolina University, respectively. An additional fiber build connected Brevard College to the ERC Broadband fiber at its Pisgah Forest PoP. Plans currently are underway to connect Montreat College. As a result of all this work, the customer base has expanded and continues to grow. Hunter has an ambitious business plan for ERC Broadband’s short term and long-term future which has been endorsed by the ERC Board of Directors. The ERC Broadband Mission is to create and promote an efficient and solid infrastructure for Internet access and related services, bringing economic opportunity to our region by continually furthering the technological growth of our education, research, and business communities.

ERC Broadband’s website is located at: www.ercbroadband.org.

Brevard College

Teachers at Brevard Middle School have just completed a 25-hour “Teaching with Primary Sources: Digital Storytelling” workshop. After participating in several foundational activities designed to develop their analytical skills in using theme-based primary sources, the teachers created narrative and documentary-style digital stories on topics such as The History of Baseball, Math in Baseball, The Great Depression, The Conservation Movement, and Appalachian Heritage, as well as stories to accompany literature studies on “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” and “Where the Red Fern Grows.”

Brevard AAM continues to work with Brevard College’s elementary education students in their social studies methods course. Over the last few weeks, these students have been introduced to the value of primary sources for instruction through analysis activities and have learned how to navigate the Library of Congress’ digital collections to locate primary sources correlated to the North Carolina K-6 social studies curriculum. During the month of April, each student will create a WebQuest that effectively utilizes primary sources to answer an essential question for learning.

Coming up on the Brevard AAM workshop schedule is Brevard Elementary School which will participate in “Teaching with Primary Sources: Digital Storytelling.”

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

Mars Hill College

Digital Storytelling workshops continue at Mars Hill College. The staff is working with teachers from around the service area. In fact, the requests for digital storytelling far outweigh the supply.

At Cane River, the teachers are a mix of elementary and middle school teachers from throughout Yancey County. At A.C. Reynolds, participants include teachers in language arts, math science, Spanish, and health, and the school librarian. The third group is from the Progressive Education Program (PEP), Buncombe County’s magnet program for severely disabled students. Although our digital storytelling program is designed for the “regular” classroom, these teachers are masters of adaptation. They quickly made the appropriate adjustments to make DS work in their classrooms.

AnneMarie Walter visited two MHC undergraduate classes lately. In CS 200, "Computer Applications for Educators, she introduced the pre-service teachers to the LOC and other Web sites of interest for teachers. In art education, AnneMarie presented the introduction to the fiber unit. With natural and dyed fleece as well as a number of woven and knitted items, AnneMarie demonstrated spinning and knitting. The class discussed color, the properties of fiber and how to implement this in the classroom. The students went on to make small cardboard loom weavings.

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

Montreat College

Throughout February and March, Montreat AAM staff has worked with teachers at Avery’s Creek Elementary, East Rutherford Middle, Erwin High, and North Buncombe High. Avery’s Creek and North Buncombe are now at the half-way mark in the beginner level Digital Storytelling series and are working on projects for their classrooms. Some of the topics the teachers are focusing on include World War II, patriotic songs, and the construction of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. East Rutherford completed the beginner level of Digital Storytelling on March 16th with stories about the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, moving to America, and slavery. Erwin High completed the beginner level of Digital Storytelling on February 27th and immediately began the advanced level one week later. Teachers at Erwin are currently gathering local stories by conducting interviews; they will meet during April to create their digital stories.

Montreat will be hosting two advanced Digital Storytelling summer institutes in June for teachers who have completed the beginner level within the past year. Registration opened on March 1st and, to date, 22 teachers have enrolled.

During the week of March 20^th, Wendy Fusco attended the North Carolina Principals and Assistant Principals Association (NCPAPA) 2006 Spring Conference for Assistant Principals. It was reported that this year’s attendance was the largest the conference had ever had with 160 participants. Wendy shared information about LOC resources and activities and provided handouts for the assistant principals to share with their teachers. One of the NCPAPA conference coordinators took the remaining handouts and planned to give them out at the state conference for principals the following week.

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

Western Carolina University

Western Carolina University’s AAM project is currently working with three K-12 schools and a group of WCU teacher education faculty.  In February, teachers from three schools completed the basic 15-hour professional development workshops.

Marianne Leek, English teacher at Hayesville High School, has been named the North Carolina “Teacher of the Year” for Region 8. Marianne is an AAM teacher from WCU and has been recognized for the work she completed in the AAM graduate course. In 2003, Marianne was recognized as the Character Educator of the Year in North Carolina.  Her AAM unit plan, “Where I am From...A Semester of Self Discovery,” was also shown to Dr. James Billington, Librarian of Congress, during his visit to North Carolina several years ago. You can see her online unit plan at: http://www.ercwc.org/lessonplans/leek/.

WCU AAM’s newest work includes helping teachers learn how to use the Library’s online primary sources with SMART Boards. SMART Board technologies and software provide teachers with opportunities to use LOC sources in new and innovative ways.  For example, an LOC image can be shown on the SMART Board and a “screen” can be pulled over the image to cover all or part of the image (very similar to the “revelation” technique used with overhead projectors and transparencies).  This helps facilitate the process of image analysis and shows how you can separate parts of the image from the overall image to determine detail and then view the entire image for overall clarity and purpose.

Two groups of WCU teacher education faculty will complete their basic 15-hour professional development workshops in March.  The third group will complete the workshops in April. 

The WCU partnership is also working on workshop materials and online materials access for teachers as well as preparing materials for the possible transition to the AAM national Web Site.

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

California University of Pennsylvania

AAM Workshops

· Brownsville School District

A total of 18 teachers attended the first two of six scheduled workshops. The workshops, “The Adventure Begins: Digital Resources at the Library of Congress” and “Tools for the Adventure: Digital Primary Resources and Critical Thinking,” were conducted on-site during the regular school day. Five schools from the district were represented.

· Ringgold School District

A total of 28 teachers attended the third and fourth of six scheduled workshops: “WebQuests: An Adventure in Online Learning” and “Bringing Adventure to the Classroom.” Teachers from five schools were released from their daily activities to attend the workshops on the university’s main campus.

· Saint Patrick’s Catholic School

Twelve teachers from this private school attended the second of six scheduled workshops. The “Tools for the Adventure: Digital Resources and Critical Thinking” workshop was delivered on-site in the school’s computer lab.

Integrating AAM into California University of Pennsylvania

Thirty-five elementary education student teachers and an elementary education faculty member attended the “Above and Beyond the History Textbook: Library of Congress Primary Resources” workshops presented by Byron Holdiman and Cindy Speer. Pre-service teachers learned to move beyond the textbooks to find resources for activities, lesson plans, and unit development.

Also, 74 educational technology students in four separate classes attended the “Above and Beyond the History Textbook: Library of Congress Primary Resources” workshop.

Veterans Oral Histories Project at California University of Pennsylvania

Of the 52 oral histories collected by AAM staff, 30 are now digitized and available on California University’s AAM Web site: http://www.cup.edu/education/aam/aamworks.jsp?pageId=1580830010421131321810329

The Department of Library Services has begun making copies for archival purposes and developing MARC records to catalog the histories for both the university catalog and Online Computer Library Center’s (OCLC) WorldCat, which is an international database for all library records.

Summer Institute

AAM staff met with university faculty members to begin planning an AAM Summer Institute, which is tentatively scheduled for the week of June 26^th. Drs. Laura Tuennerman and David Lonich, Department of History and Political Science, and Dr. Richard Wyman, Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education, met with AAM staff to lay the groundwork for workshops and activities. The group will meet regularly to coordinate and publicize the Institute.

Other

On March 7^th, LOC representatives George Daves and Elizabeth Ridgway visited Cal U’s campus to discuss current and future plans for the AAM program. Afterward, the group traveled to Waynesburg College to meet with AAM staff there. The Waynesburg AAM staff hosted a delicious luncheon for all and the entire group discussed AAM’s transition to the Library’s Digital Collections and Educational Curriculum Program.

Cindy Speer accepted another position on campus in the Department of History and Political Science. Cindy was an exceptional AAM staff person and her contributions regularly went far beyond her job description.

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

Waynesburg College

Waynesburg College recently hosted a visit from Elizabeth Ridgway and George Daves from the Library. The meeting was held to discuss the transition to the Library’s new Digital Collections and Educational Curricula (DCEC) program. The meeting was attended by Mike Brna and Byron Holdiman from California University’s AAM program as well.

“Spring Back to the Past,” an evening workshop series focusing on five different topics is in full swing. Between 13 and 15 participants have been attending and are expected for the final Wednesday workshop on March 29. Evaluations are completed after each session and honest, open suggestions and feedback are encouraged. In answer to the question, “What would you change to make this workshop more useful to you?” several participants gave similar responses to this, “I wouldn’t change anything!” The workshop evaluations, as always, are the best opportunity to reflect on the impact WC AAM is having on teachers and, therefore, on students. In addition, participants are provided with opportunities to continually interact with workshop facilitators.

WC hosted a visitation day for high school Academic League students and their teachers. Twenty-three students from Carmichaels Area High School participated in a “My Day in History” workshop led by Sue Wise. Students used the Today in History feature of the LOC and a template to write their own newspapers. Creativity was evident in the biographical articles and Library resource materials provided information and photos for the historical pieces. At the same time, Amy Martin and Barbara Kirby were leading a group of 13 teachers through “Sights and Sounds of the Civil War.” Many of the teachers were new to AAM and several indicated the desire to attend additional WC AAM workshops.

Central Greene Middle and High school social studies and gifted teachers came to the Waynesburg College campus for professional development. Thirteen teachers completed both “The Illustrated Gettysburg Address” and “Sights and Sounds of the Civil War.”

West Greene School District teachers hosted “Mining Memories,” the first in the Basic Training workshop series. Thirty teachers completed the training. Terry Tanner was the first teacher to use the new Resource CDs. He requested the Frank Lloyd Wright collection to use with his sociology class.

An introductory presentation on the LOC and AAM program was presented to the first two local private schools – Open Door Christian School and Central Christian Academy. In all, 23 teachers attended. Central Christian Academy teachers, in particular, were quite excited about the professional development and asked WC AAM staff to schedule workshops for the fall. Specific dates are yet to be determined for each school.

Barb Kirby and Amy Martin presented the documentary “Remembering Mather” to the Clarksville Lion’s Club. The project introduced Waynesburg College students to the Library and taught them how to access the historical primary source documents available there. The movie was well received by Lion’s members, honored Jefferson Morgan students of the month and their families, and Jefferson Morgan School District’s superintendent, Donna Furnier.

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

University of South Carolina Upstate

USC Upstate will wrap up several workshop series this week.  “Instructional Uses of Digital Primary Sources” workshops will end with participants presenting their projects at Jonesville High School and Foster Park Elementary School in Union, S.C.  Participants have enjoyed discovering the digital primary sources found on the American Memory Web site as they prepared instructional materials for the classroom.  Spartanburg County School District Six workshop participants are putting the finishing touches on their digital stories.  A movie festival will complete their series of workshops.

Margaret Jo Caughman, a participant in the Phase I graduate class at USC Upstate, received a surprise e-mail from a teacher in Montana thanking her for the lesson she prepared on “Farewell to Manzanar.” The teacher said she was using it in her senior high school class. Margaret Jo was thrilled to know that someone was using her lesson!  Margaret Jo's lesson plan can be found at:

http://www.uscupstate.edu/academics/education/aam/lessons/margaret_caughman/index.htm

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 move forward in the four-step professional development program with all participating school systems. This spring, in order to deepen educator content of available LOC resources for particular subject areas, social studies teachers visited the Library for special presentations on the topic of women’s suffrage, and reading teachers learned more about the Center for Books, Rare Books, and Children’s Literature.

Participants really appreciate these opportunities to work with LOC staff. Follow-up workshops after the LOC visits assist teachers in developing classroom activities that use the resources highlighted on their trips to the LOC.

A large part of the AAMNVA program is the after-school workshops that are offered on a continuous basis. As the program moves into Step Four, teachers who have completed all steps in the professional development program are now serving as LOC Ambassadors for Learning, leading the AAMNVA school-based workshop series at their own school and assisting teachers in implementing primary source-based learning experiences with students. Congratulations to Marcia Baynes from Alexandria City Public Schools who became the first AAMNVA LOC Ambassador.

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

Online Education

AAM’s Online Education Program announces the departure of Joe Totherow, Instructional Designer and Webmaster, on March 29. Joe has accepted a position with the U.S. Treasury Department in St. Louis, Mo. AAM is grateful to Joe’s many contributions to the development and enhancement of the online student lessons.