The Pisgah
Forest Institute (PFI) staff is most appreciative to the USDA Forest
Service for their financial support of the Institute program over the past
six years. Without that funding the PFI program probably would be
substantially reduced in scope. Conversely PFI has tried to be of aid to the
USDAFS with regards to supporting their efforts, within their conservation
education mission, to reinvigorate their "focus on pre-K through 12th
grade students and their educators, both formal and non-formal". That
aspect of the Forest Service mission was clarified in the January
26, 2005
memo to Regional Foresters, Station Directors, Area Director, IITF Director,
and WO Staff that was signed by Chief Dale N. Bosworth and each of his Deputy
Chiefs.
In their
workshops, the PFI staff and their contacted instructors from other agencies
have made a concerted effort to help educators better understand the
responsibilities of the Forest Service as well as gain some exposure to the
on-going activities of that governmental agency. For example, the Pisgah
District Ranger has spoken to each of the Earth/Environmental Science for
Middle and High School Teachers workshop sessions regarding the challenges
inherent in trying to make Forest Service resources available for multiple
uses. Those same classes visit the Bent Creek Experimental Forest where they gain a better
understanding of the time and effort that is required to develop more
cost-effective programs for culturing different types of trees for
commercial purposes. Nearly all the PFI workshops spend time at the
Cradle of Forestry Center where the students learn from the excellent
exhibits and knowledgeable employees about the early history of
the Service. USDA Forest
Service
staff has provided instruction in most of the PFI workshops. This has given the
students insights regarding the quality of the USDAFS employees as well as
provided the Forest Service staff with a better appreciation of the academic
needs and interests of the educators enrolled in these courses. Much of
the subject matter - such as fire, invasive species, erosion prevention, and
sustainability issues - in the PFI offerings is based on the major concerns of the
Service as expressed by the Chief. As those priorities change, the
Institute courses have been modified to address the new issues. PFI also has exposed its students
to pamphlets, posters and other educational materials distributed by the
Service. The PFI Elements course made extensive use of the excellent film -
"The Greatest Good" - concerning the history of
the Service. Each student received a copy of that video to
show to their classes.
On average
the PFI take-aways, including the materials
from and about the USDAFS, are shared by workshop attendees with 7.5 other
educators. Therefore through that process the teaching aids, that are provided
without charge to the each Institute workshop attendee, get a good deal of
student exposure. Participants also have been given a copy of the excellent
USDAFS magazine "Natural Inquirer" and encouraged to secure future
issues for their students. In addition the
editor of this publication accepted the invitation from PFI to participate in a workshop where she received most helpful feedback which
should be of aid in making her magazine more responsive to the needs of those
teaching environmental materials at the K - 12 level.
The
Institute also has conveyed to its classes forest educational materials
from non-federal sources. One of their most popular takeaways is the "Goods from the Woods" box that is compiled
by the North Carolina Forestry Association (NCFA). This teaching aid contains a
wide variety of commercial products, such as toothpaste and soft drinks
that most individuals do not recognize as containing materials from
forests. PFI also promotes on its website the courses on forestry and forestry
conservation topics that are offered for educators by the NCFA, USDAFS, the
Department Forestry and Environmental Resources of NC State University as
well as other agencies. The teachers enrolled in PFI's Earth/Environmental Science for
Elementary School Teachers spend half a day at the Holmes Educational Forest in a hands-on exercise concerning
tree identification as well as relationships among different forest
habitats and the animals most commonly found in those areas. Those exercises
are led by the excellent Environmental Educators employed by the
North Carolina Department of Forestry.
So while
the content of the PFI courses is "driven" by the mandated curriculums
of Departments of Education for the states in which the Institute
students are employed, the Institute staff draws upon
forest subject matter and materials to address those required topics.
Special emphasis is given to information and teaching aids from the USDA Forest
Service.
Heather Cosby,
who has implemented many changes that have significantly improved the
quality of the PFI programs in her capacity as Operations Coordinator since
October 2002, is relocating with her family to Jackson, Wyoming. Her husband, Drew, has accepted a
senior position with a growing newspaper in that community. This move
also will put her in closer proximity to her family. During her tenure with the
Institute Heather has made major contributions that have enhanced the
content of courses, the appearance of and organization of the website and as
well as a host of areas involving graphics. Heather’s design of the PFI logo and shirts has drawn well
deserved praise. Probably her most significant contribution has been the
"Elements" workshop, in which she took on the challenging task
of relating relationships among biological, physical and chemical
components of environments in an effort to create a more "advanced"
workshop for teachers. Heather has ably managed the office functions as well as
supervised Assistants and others who have reported to her over the
past three plus years. All the PFI staff and her many friends at
Brevard College wish her continued success in whatever future endeavor that she
elects to pursue. Heather will be missed.
PFI's
website is located at www.brevard.edu/pfi.
The Amphibians and
Reptiles of the Woodland Landscape course on April 5th was a
great success. According to comments in
the evaluations and with twenty-two teachers attending, it was clear that
holding a course on a weekday was not a problem. Even though the weather was not the greatest,
damp and cold, it did not seem to “dampen” the teachers’ spirits.
The day began at 8:00am with registration and
breakfast. Tim Eichner, Director of the Water Resource Center, welcomed the group and gave a
brief introduction to the day’s activities.
Dr. Jerry Skinner, Keystone College Biology Professor, was up next. Dr. Skinner showed a power point presentation
on amphibian habitats, life history and metamorphosis which was very
informative and well received. Tim then
provided the teachers with a few sample activities from the PA Fish and Boat
Commission’s PA Amphibians and Reptiles
Curriculum Guide. The teachers
became the students for a moment and participated in these activities.
One of the best ways to learn about amphibians and reptiles
is to examine live specimens. Dr. Skinner
has traps set up by the stream to collect spotted salamanders. Heavy rains a few nights before the course
made the conditions perfect. Tim and Dr.
Skinner collected over 65 spotted salamanders (which can grow up to 10 in!) and
many other species as well as frogs. The
teachers were fascinated to see the real things.
After a great lunch, provided by Keystone College’s food service, it was time to get
down and dirty in the field! By this
time it had warmed up considerably from the morning but it was still
chilly. The group set out on Keystone’s
woodland trails to find the best spots for some sightings. The first stop was in a wetland area to
collect frog and salamander egg masses.
The teachers were asked to bring in Tupperware containers if they wanted
to take home the egg masses. The rest of
the afternoon was spent flipping over rocks and logs and sloshing through the
stream in waders to see what they could find.
Some of the species found were the eastern redback salamander, the
red-spotted newt, and the northern two-lined salamander.
Back at the Water Resource Center, Howard Jennings, Director of
KceeI, gave the group a brief overview of KceeI and the 2006 courses for
teachers. After a wrap-up and
evaluations were completed, so was the 2006 Amphibians and Reptiles
course. The success of this course is
probably best appreciated through some of the comments included in their
evaluations:
“What an informative,
energizing, and motivating day. I hope
to share your enthusiasm with my students and awaken a love of science in all
of my students.”
“The resources right here
at Keystone College never cease to amaze me. This is such a high quality educational
institute!”
“KceeI is wonderful and
provides educators with great information to share with inquisitive students.”
“The courses and materials
are excellent! Really fun!”
Just a
reminder…
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.
The SANTeer
(Storage Area Network Technology for Education and Environmental Research)
project has been completed. ERC Broadband, through a subcontract with UNC-Asheville which
was funded by the Library of Congress, built a storage area network (SAN) as part of the ERC Broadband infrastructure. The SAN contains 6 terrabytes of storage
and is part of ERC Broadband’s high performance computing center. In addition to providing
bandwidth through transport and/or internet access, ERC Broadband also offers network
services and the SAN is a key component in its Disaster Recovery and Off-site
Storage solutions. To learn more about these products, please visit www.ercbroadband.org.
The
additional infrastructure has allowed ERC Broadband to be an important
partner in several community initiatives throughout Western North Carolina as well as Upstate South Carolina. ERC Broadband has been engaged in these
activities as part of its mission to expand the technological infrastructure in
support of developing the regional workforce into a technology driven one.
ERC Broadband’s website is located at: www.ercbroadband.org.
Barat Education Foundation
The Barat Education Foundation program continues to grow and
gain momentum. School requests for workshops continue to
grow, and it seems we are teaching the Focus with Photos every month at a new
location.
We are proud to announce that almost 4,000 students in Illinois
are currently using the Abraham Lincoln primary source workbook. We are getting refill requests and look
forward to continued program growth with primary students.
The interactive history game will be in alpha-test during
late April and early May and in beta-test over the summer. We are planning a mid-Fall 06 release.
If you are interested in using the workbook or testing the
game, please contact The Barat Education Foundation for details.
Barat’s AAM
program website is located at: www.americanmemory.org.
DePaul University
DePaul plans to begin its faculty development training this
summer. More than 10 faculty members
from the School
of Education
are planning to participate in the faculty development sessions. Participants will create new instructional
strategies that would incorporate Library of Congress (LOC) primary resources
into course instruction; develop and implement curriculum activities for pre-K
to grade 12 using the LOC resources; and create syllabi to document the
integration of LOC curriculum resources in courses and candidates’ work
samples.
DePaul has also released its first electronic newsletter for
program participants and graduates. This
first edition features LOC resources for teachers on the women’s’ suffrage
movement and links to how these examples may be incorporated into classroom
instruction.
DePaul’s AAM
program website is located at: http://aam.depaul.edu/.
Federation
of Independent Illinois Colleges and Universities (FIICU)
Several project faculty presented at the Midwest Association
of Teacher Educators conference
on March 31 where they unveiled a new CD of project activities. Also the project Web site has been revised to
better meet project needs.
FIICU’s AAM
program website is located at: http://aam.nl.edu/.
Governors State University
On April 1st, the following e-mail from an 2004 Elite
Training alumnus was received. It is
representative of the many messages the GSU AAM
program receives regularly and
demonstrates the long term affects the AAM
program is having in the classroom and on students:
Just a little up-date
on using LOC....having my class use it to find material for a WWII scrapbook
project. They have to find photos, news articles, and letters and create
a historic-fiction scrapbook. They will do journaling and essay writing
etc. A bit of an ambitious project for 8th grade....but they are really
falling under the spell of LOC...thank you and the program so much for giving
me this tool!
During the past month at GSU, an orientation session was
held for university faculty who are interested in participating in the Elite
Level Training this spring. The program
has accepted 20 faculty members, many with a concentration in English or
language arts. The 60 hours of training
will begin in late April and the GSU team is looking forward to the production
of some interesting projects.
A breakfast was held for school administrators from the 19
school districts and 39 schools that GSU has worked with in the past. The purpose of the breakfast was
threefold: 1) to get a re-commitment
form these schools and districts; 2) to promote workshops for the next school
year; and 3) to begin the application process for at least 40 teachers to
participate in the Elite Level 60-hour training sessions for school year
2006-07. Applications have been flooding
in since the meeting and districts are now reviewing their schedules to book
workshops.
March was a month of sadness for the GSU program since there
was a break-in and theft of the AAM
equipment. In the beginning, great
lengths were taken to find a highly secure spot for the video conferencing
equipment, wireless router, Sony video camera, and the projector. It appears that when a thief wants in, it
hardly matters what the lock looks like.
The program is quickly ordering new equipment since there are upcoming
events where it will be needed.
Since GSU now has amassed a healthy and searchable library
of projects posted, the time has come to share a few of the outstanding
ones. Most are wonderful, but there are
a few that still need improvement to meet the rigorous standards of the AAM
program. The site has many projects at
the elementary school level, a grade level where it is often difficult to find
good AAM-LOC
posted projects. Here are a few that represent
a firm focus on LOC primary sources that are presented in a constructivist
teaching environment:
Building
Illinois: Canals and Railroads and the Making of Cities in Illinois
Sophomore U.S.
history deals with the growth of America
in the early 1800s. Students will be expected to learn about the rapid growth
of the "western" United
States of this period
(i.e., Old Northwest
territories of Illinois,
Michigan,
Indiana,
Wisconsin,
etc.). Much of this is due to the trading possibilities of this land, with
agricultural, industrial, and mineral assets abundant throughout. Through these
activities, students should be able to learn more about the inhabiting of the Illinois
landscape and the reasons behind it.
It’s a
Woman’s Right! 6th grade and
up. 1. Understand the role of women from
1840 to 1920 and reforms women wanted.
2. Describe and compare methods used by different suffragists to pass
the 19th Amendment in America. 3. Compare the states' methods for achieving
suffrage with the national methods; analyzing reasons for their differences.
Curriculum Fit: Women's U.
S. history, language
arts, reading, and technology.
Our
Community, Past, Present, and Future. These activities are most appropriate
for students in grades 3-6 but can easily work for older students. This project
was designed to enable students to explore the history of Harvey,
Illinois;
the organizations and areas related to current life in Harvey;
and to envision the role the students play in creating the future Harvey
they desire. There are three sections:
past, present, and future. Students come to three doors and make a
choice whether to open the door to the present or travel through time to the
past or the future in a time machine. There are a variety of activities that
the students (in groups or individually) can perform that will help them learn
what they need to perform the tasks.
The
Enlightenment in Action High
School.
Why do we have laws? Where does government's authority come from? What
rights and privileges are people entitled to? Why can't I just do whatever I
want? This lesson is designed to help students make a connection between the
ideals of the Enlightenment philosophies and the revolutionaries in America
and France.
Students will examine primary source documents to find out what the people in
each revolution were striving for.
Students in the course would have already have learned about the
Enlightenment thinkers and their ideals. They will make a more in-depth
examination of the French Revolution, culminating in the "Revolutionary
Comic Book" project.
A
Blast From The Past…Time Travelers. 2nd grade. In this project, students will get a small
taste of what life was like for their ancestors. They will compare and contrast
elements of the past to the present. Specifically, students will examine
communication, transportation, education, and entertainment of the past. Pack your bags and come along for the ride.
You're going back in time to see what life was like for your grandma's grandma.
In this unit you will explore how people communicated long ago (before they had
cell phones and e-mail!). You'll also learn about the transportation of the
past and what it was like to go to school back then. Finally, you'll explore
what people did for fun long before there was the X-Box or Nintendo. So, what
are you waiting for? Leave your Game Boy behind, and ... Lets go!!!
Reconstruction:
America's Dream and Disappointment High
School. The years immediately following
the American Civil War brought forth dramatic social, economic, and political
changes. For the newly-freed men and women, Reconstruction offered the
possibility that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness could be realized.
Sadly, these promises were not fulfilled. Reconstruction ended in
disappointment. Yet during Reconstruction and after, men and women struggled to
revolutionize American society and seeds were planted. This site explores the
promises of Reconstruction as well as its failures. Students review the
Constitutional amendments that defined citizenship and voting rights. They
research primary source documents that illustrate the successes and
disappointments of Reconstruction. Students select a primary source document to
evaluate the success or failure of this historic era.
Governors
State’s
AAM
program website is located at: http://aam.govst.edu/.
Loyola University
During the current academic year, the Loyola AAM
program has focused on a faculty-based program.
The participating faculty includes all the full-time School
of Education
faculty who expressed interest regardless of specialty area, a selected group
of adjunct faculty who deal intensively with teacher education students, and a
selected group of full time faculty from the College
of Arts
and Sciences who work very closely with teacher education students through
courses in their subject areas.
In all 29 faculty members joined in. During the fall semester, they attended a
series of required classes on LOC resources and how to integrate them into
their teaching. During the spring
semester, they have had individual and small group assistance with a required
"project." The project
involves creating, using, and evaluating teaching material meaningfully using
Library resources in conformance with any applicable state, national, or
association standards. The projects are
to be completed during the spring semester.
Already two of the participants have "graduated" (i.e., they
receive a certificate of ownership for the laptop computer that was initially
loaned to them for the program).
Excitement about the program has been high and it appears the result of
this will be that Loyola's teacher education students will encounter the LOC as
a resource in several of their classes as they progress through the
program.
The newest "graduate" has submitted an
ethnographic project from the qualitative research course she teaches. It focuses on ethnographic artifacts (quilts)
and is of particular interest because of the way it taps both Library resources
and those available on the AAM
national database.
Loyola AAM
is pleased to announce that Marcus Hughes,
Assistant Director, has earned his doctorate in cultural educational policy
studies. Congratulations, Marcus!
Loyola’s AAM
website is located at: http://www.luc.edu/schools/education/aam/index.shtml.
Eastern
Illinois University
Eastern Illinois University AAM
completed a workshop series at Casey-Westfield
High School
with 27 teachers. The workshops were
held during the school’s Professional Development Early Dismissal Days. Comments from teachers on evaluations
included “These resources and activities applied to all areas of learning! The arts are sometimes left out. Thank you!”
and “I enjoyed learning about all of the resources available at the
Library. I am anxious to incorporate it
into family and consumer science courses.”
Cindy and Margo Tomaras (DePaul AAM)
presented a session at the Illinois Reading Conference entitled “Who Needs
Reality TV? Library of Congress Primary
Sources, This Is As Real As It Gets!”
The session was attended by several teachers and was well received. Cindy
also took part as a member of a panel discussion for the Illinois Council for
Continuing Higher Education in Springfield. This meeting was attended by individuals
representing many Illinois
institutions of higher education. The
meeting theme was “Community Cultural Resources and Higher Education: Working
Together.”
EIU’s AAM
program website is located at: http://www.eiu.edu/~eiuaam/.
Illinois State University
The ISU-AAM
team continues to train a number of Central
Illinois teachers and library information
specialists through its blended workshop course titled, “Integrating Digital
Primary Resources Across the K-12 Curriculum.” This is currently being piloted
as a hybrid course combining face-to-face and online instruction. AAM
staff look forward to a half-day session with participants scheduled for the
afternoon of April 20. This will be the end of the first pilot test. Staff look forward to learning from the
participants how this experience can be improved.
ISU AAM
is currently preparing for six summer institutes. Two of these will be
conducted online and the other four will take place on the ISU campus.
Registrations are coming in for the more than 180 seats available for this
opportunity.
ISU’s AAM
program website is located at: http://www.mlb.ilstu.edu/aam.
Southern
Illinois University-Edwardsville
April 10th and 17th are the last two
class meetings for the assessment block with AAM. In May, the students will present their
master’s project and portfolio to the faculty and instructors from the Master
of Arts in Teaching (MAT)
program.
An advertisement is in the process of being created to help
promote the summer elective course to all education graduate students. An informational handout will be distributed
to various departments on campus, Regional Offices of Educations, and K-12
district offices.
The AAM
team completed a 12-hour basic workshop series during the month of March with J.M.D.
Brown
School
in the East St. Louis
School District. The teachers represented grades K-5. Some lesson topics include holidays (i.e.,
how we celebrate) for kindergarten and a study of the labor work force, then
and now, for third grade.
Taylorville
School District
began their workshop series on March 30 with a three-hour workshop during their
teacher in-service day. Those interested
will complete the remaining nine-hour series during the summer.
Springtime is here and so are teacher county
institutes! After completing a
presentation with the Madison County Teacher Institute in March, the AAM
team presented at the St. Clair County Teacher Institute on April 7. Teachers
from six different schools were represented during the 90-minute presentation.
SIU-E’s AAM
program website is located at: http://www.siue.edu/education/aam.
Metropolitan State College of Denver
Google Earth / Geocaching Workshops a Success!
AAM-Colorado’s
April Google Earth / Geocaching Workshops were a hit with Colorado K-12
educators and Metro
State
faculty and staff. On April 5, technology expert John Kuglin demonstrated how to use Google
Earth in the classroom, using such examples as overlaying modern digital images
of landscapes over historic battlefield maps and other primary sources. AAM-Colorado
Assistant Director Chris Jennings
hosted a second workshop April 6.
Geocaching allows the coordinates of historic locations to
be plotted into a GPS
device, in preparation for a tour of the sites. Geocaching can be used in
conjunction with Google Earth. Beyond the classroom (or computer lab), students
examine primary source photos from the past with their position
"waypoints" and an activity listed on the back of each primary
source. Students enter the waypoints into a GPS
device, and when they arrive at the location, compare and contrast what they
see with the old photo. Activities can relate to math, science, and history,
while teaching about the past and the present.
AAM-Colorado
plans to add the Google Earth / Geocaching content to its Workshop Series III
curriculum beginning in summer 2006.
Digital Storytelling Workshops Planned for June
AAM-Colorado
Saturday Digital Storytelling Workshop sessions are planned for Friday,
June 8 and Saturday, June 9. 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.
MSCD’s AAM
program website is located at: http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu.
Quincy University
The initial plan for Quincy
University’s
AAM
program is being firmed up. The roll-out for the presentation of LOC workshops
will begin with faculty workshops in May and June. K-12 faculty institutes are
being scheduled for this summer with flexible workshops set up for the
fall. The ERC
has approved funding for various parts of the initial plan.
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 AAM
project will launch in July with a demo of key project website features. The demo site will feature a “module,” that
is, a mini-resource set of Library primary resources built into an interactive
lesson planner. The first interactive
lesson planner is a graphical overview of the lesson plans designed to study
the identified primary resources dealing with public criticisms of
Congress. For this module, those
resources will be political cartoons. In
addition, lessons will feature current issues that direct students to the
THOMAS website. All
lessons and activities will be aligned with curriculum standards for all
states.
The demo site will also include a set of online activities
related to the module. Using the web-based
applets designed for this project, students will be able to produce scrapbooks,
storyboards, timelines, or other graphical organizers as specified in the
accompanying lesson plans.
As site development rolls out, other modules with
interactive lesson planners and student interactives will be added. Modules will focus on themes of Congress,
representative democracy, and citizen participation.
Other planned website features include: an interactive quick
start guide; an introduction to primary resources; and a help section with
guides on conducting effective searches, understanding copyright issues, and
using the technology.
Field-testing and evaluation of project components will
begin in the fall. Research on the
effectiveness of the components for teacher utilization will be conducted. The
research plan is under development and school contacts for field test sites are
being confirmed this spring.
Elaine Larson, Project Coordinator, along with Ava Bair and
Janis Watson, project education consultants, presented information about the
project to social studies teachers at the Indiana Council for the Social
Studies Annual Conference in March. In
May, Larson will be presenting the project at the mentor training workshop for
the We the People Summer Institutes. As
a part of the Representative Democracy for America Partnership (Center for
Civic Education, Center on Congress, and National Conference of State
Legislatures), information about each partner is presented to We the People
Summer Institute participants. This
year, Center on Congress information will include an introduction to the AAM
project and a demo of the project Web site.
The Center on Congress’ AAM
program website is located at:
http://www.aamprogram.org/introduction/aam_partners_detail.aspx?id=28.