The latest
Pisgah Forest Institute (PFI) workshop, "Geology Rocks" (April
7-8, 2006)
was an overwhelming success. Attendees came from as far away as Central Florida and the North Carolina coast. However most of the students
are teachers in the 11th Congressional District in Western North Carolina. Jessica Sharp did an
outstanding job in advertising and organizing the course content. The bulk
of the instruction was done by Dick Hilliard, a veteran science teacher at Hendersonville High School and long-term contracted employee
with PFI. PFI Assistant David Funderburk and
Intern Aaron Motley also contributed to workshop. The PFI staff expresses their appreciation
to the staff with the North Carolina State University Minerals Research
Laboratory, which is located in Asheville, NC, for provided the materials for the
rocks and minerals kits. Each participant received one of those teaching aids
which contain samples of the twenty most common rocks and minerals found in North Carolina along with a video on those
substances and a map showing their distribution. In post workshop evaluations
that takeaway consistently is listed as one of the most valuable instructional
items distributed to the course participants by PFI.
The
Progress Energy Foundation has award the Institute another grant for $25,000 to
offset the costs of teachers
from their service
areas in North and South Carolina as well as Florida attending workshops as well as
contributing the PFI Endowment. The latter is a fund that was
established several years ago to support the core staff of the
Institute in event that there was a catastrophic loss of income. As an
organization that is 100% dependant for support on external funding, such
"insurance" is critical for the sustainability of the program. Over
the past five years Progress Energy has invested more than
$127,000 in PFI. As a result of their generosity as well as additional
funding that PFI has been able to secure, more than 250 teachers from within the regions
served by Progress Energy have been able to attend the
Institute during the summer and academic year. The Western Regional
Office of this utility also has facilitated field trips to their generating
station in Asheville that have been part of the
curriculum of several PFI workshops. Through those experiences course participants
have gained a better understanding of pollution abatement, air quality issues
as well as how materials once considered to be wastes can be used in the
manufacture of useful by-products.
PFI's "Earth and Environmental Science for Middle and High School
Teachers: A Distance Learning Opportunity" successfully concluded on April
29 with a field exercise in the Pisgah National Forest. The cooperation and participation
of Lynn Verink at the Pisgah Center for Wildlife Education, a North
Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR) program that
is located in the middle of the National Forest, is gratefully acknowledged. Lynn gave an excellent presentation on
their trout hatchery and stocking program. The Center staff has also provided
instruction in other PFI courses. The distance learning course participants came
from all three major regions of North Carolina - coastal plain, Piedmont and mountains. The primary
motivation for offering this course was to enable those people who were not
able to attend summer workshops to gain access to and benefit from the
information offered by the Institute. PFI Assistant Funderburk played a major
role in grading the material that each student was required to submit as part
of each course section - geology, water, air quality as well as plants and
animals. He along with Operations Coordinator Heather Cosby orchestrated the
field component and concluding graduation exercise.
The
environmental education activities of the PFI staff are not confined solely to
their activities in the Institute workshops. During the academic year they
lecture in numerous courses at Brevard College including Wilderness Leadership,
Teacher Education, Ecology and Environmental Sciences. In addition they also
provide instruction at several local elementary, middle and high school. The
Institute employees are in high demand during the weeks surrounding Earth Day.
There still
are a few openings in the PFI workshops being offered this summer. For more information
about the latter including directions on how to register do to www.brevard.edu/pfi.
PFI's
website is located at www.brevard.edu/pfi.
On Friday, April 7, the NEIU-19’s Instructional Program Planning Council (IPPC) held a meeting at Keystone College’s Water Resource Center. This group meets four times a year, in
October, December, February, and April and is composed of a representative from
each of the twenty school districts within the NEIU-19. The primary function of
this program is to provide current profiles of school programs and services
locally, regionally, statewide, and nationally for districts'
consideration.
The agenda from the meeting was as
follows:
9:10 am. to 9:55 am
Salvatore Luzio, Superintendent of Riverside, Gene Camoni, Superintendent of
Old Forge and Mike Speziale, Director of Graduate Education at Wilkes
University are on the Northeastern Pennsylvania Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development (NePASCD) and Pennsylvania Legislature Influence
Committees. They explained the scope, origin, and purpose of NePASCD’s
statewide initiative. They also shared their experience during their “Day on
the Hill” when they talked with their legislators concerning implications of
laws that relate to education. They spoke to the group about how they could
become involved in the initiative.
10:10 am. to 10:50 am. Scranton School
District received a three-year grant from
the Annenburg Foundation to hire and train literacy and math coaches. Bill
King, Assistant to the Superintendent, gave an overview of the program. Leeta
Dennebaum, math coach and Laura Stefonetti, literacy coach explained the role
of the coaches in improving teaching and learning, how the coaches work with
faculty, and the impact of coaches on student achievement.
11:00 am. to 11:20 am.
Marianne Argenio, Region 7 Site Coordinator, explained the Homeless Children’s
Initiative Program, the federal legislation that protects the rights of
homeless children; she discussed the educational barriers that these children
face.
11:20 am. to 11:40 am.
Anne Chervanka explained NEIU 19’s newest partnership with WVIA whose primary
focus is to provide quality professional development to districts. Staff members from NEIU 19 are currently
recording DVD’s on
various topics related to curriculum and instruction. The DVD’s will be
45 minutes to one hour in length. Districts may borrow DVD’s to use
in conjunction with study groups or to supplement other professional
development activities.
11:40 am. to 12:00 pm. Howard Jennings,
Director of the Keystone College Environmental Educational Institute, spoke
about the 2006 environmental programs that KceeI is offering to teachers of
grades K-12. He also shared highlights of the successes of past courses and
showed a power point presentation from the 2005 Forest Stewardship course.
A catered lunch was held in the Fireplace Lounge at Keystone College. Feedback from the IPPC committee showed that
the meeting was a success and that the members were greatly impressed with the
statistics from KceeI’s 2005 courses.
Participants were provided with 2006 KceeI brochures to distribute
within their district as well as other KceeI materials.
In other news, the 2006 Lackawanna and Wyoming counties
Envirothon will be held at Keystone College on May
10. Local high school students will compete
in natural resource and environmental science topic areas for the chance to go
on to the PA state Envirothon competition held at the Penn State Mont Alto
campus on May 22 and 23, 2006.
As KceeI continues to gear up for the busy summer ahead, Keystone College students
are winding down. This week marks the
final week of classes at the college.
Finals will be held next week and commencement is on Saturday, May 13. Let’s hope that the weather is as nice for
commencement as it has been this week.
Summer is just around the corner!
Just a
reminder…
KceeI’s
website is located at www.KceeI.keystone.edu.
Pacific Forest Institute
We have had
a very good Sierra
Nevada
winter in terms of snow pack. As a result, access to the “high country” will be
later than usual. One of the PFI Teacher workshop sites this year,
at Hidden Lake is located above the 7,000 ft.
elevation, but we should be able to get into the area by mid-July for our
sessions.
In the
meantime, Mark McReynolds, PFI Program Coordinator utilized our William Jessup University
(WJU) campus to develop “Creation Week”. This involved basic Earth Day
activities with a Christian title, since WJU is a private Christian University.
On Monday,
Mark held a University Pond Exploration that provided an opportunity to see the
wonders of nature on a small scale.
Tuesday
there was a cleanup of Oracle Creek and Sunset Blvd; both near the campus. That
evening, students were shown a PBS movie “Worse Than Bird Flu: Affluenza”
On
Wednesday, there was an early morning (6:30-8:00 a.m.) Bird (Watching) Walk that
culminated in the opportunity to assist in the cleanup of the University Pond.
Thursday
afternoon the group was treated to an in depth review of the importance of
Vernal Pools, while at the same time learning about the local wildflowers.
We will be
holding Project Aquatic WILD Training on campus May 6 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. for basic training and facilitator
training that can be utilized during our summer sessions. Aquatic WILD is an
award winning K-12, interdisciplinary, conservation and environmental education
program that emphasizes aquatic wildlife. Activity Guides are provided without
charge, and is a very practical, interactive workshop. These activities have
been correlated to the California State content standards.
We continue
to market our summer sessions and every California school principal received a
beautiful brochure in January. Mark McReynolds will be visiting our local
schools and distributing more brochures in the near future.
Mark
McReynolds and Mary McFarland (PFI Administrative Assistant) toured the local Sierra Pacific
Mill that will be used as part of our summer workshops.
In
addition, we are beginning to develop teaching assistance from Tahoe National Forest personnel, as well as other state
and federal agencies.
We all look
forward to the teaching opportunities that have been made available through ERC and William Jessup University.
For updated
information on the Pacific Forest Institute, please visit our website at:
http://www.jessup.edu/academics/pacificforestinstitute.
There have been a number of meetings recently which Hunter
Goosmann, ERC
Broadband General Manager, has attended and several at which he has presented.
These meetings, while not necessarily connected through a common program or
project, are part of significant community development projects that will bring
a lot of opportunity to the region in addition to further educational growth.
For example, the Western North Carolina Education Network (WNC-EDNET)
held its kickoff recently at Smoky
Mountain
Elementary School
in Whittier
to announce its Golden Leaf project to the general public. WNC-EDNET
is connecting the schools, community colleges and university in the six far
western NC counties through broadband technology. You can read about this
project at http://www.wresa.org/wncednet/wncednetinfo.htm.
Hunter represented ERC
Broadband at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
celebration of Earth Day, which took place at the NC Arboretum on April 21st,
where the guest of honor was NOAA's Chief of Staff, Scott Rayder. He and Tom
Karl, Director of the National
Climatic
Data
Center
in Asheville,
presented the NOAA Environmental Hero Award to NC Arboretum Director George
Briggs.
ERC
Broadband is working with WNC-EDNET,
NOAA, NCDC, the North Carolina University System (of which the NC Arboretum is
a part) and many more groups to bring more technology to the region to benefit
the community and grow the economy.
ERC Broadband’s website is located at: www.ercbroadband.org.
New
AAM National Director Welcomed
The ERC
is pleased to announce the appointment of Robert
Pettis, Ed.D., as the new AAM
National Program Director, effective April 21. As many in the AAM
community know, Bob has most recently been Director of the AAM
program at the University
of South Carolina Upstate
(Spartanburg).
As part of his overall duties with the ERC,
Bob will conclude his AAM
activity at USC
Upstate this spring while also working as National Program Director. With
the conclusion the USC
Upstate AAM
program, he will fully join the AAM
staff in Asheville,
NC. As
part of his duties, Bob will be working to help the ERC
develop a math, science, and technology initiative.
Bob brings to the ERC
an extensive background in teaching and administration. He holds a
doctorate in curriculum and instruction and an Ed.S. in educational
administration. In 2001, Bob retired from the Spartanburg
County
(South Carolina)
public school system after 28 years of service as a classroom teacher and an
elementary school principal. In addition, he has had a long association
with USC
Upstate as a consultant, instructor, and grants director. More recently,
he has returned to the K-12 classroom part-time teaching middle school science
and social studies in Polk County,
NC.
Bob may be reached at bpettis@ercwc.org
or ph. (828) 253-1879.
Western
North Carolina
The four Western North Carolina AAM
partners (Brevard
College,
Mars
Hill
College,
Montreat
College,
and Western
Carolina
University)
and AAM’s
Online Education office are collaborating on several initiatives to continue
serving educators in the region over the coming 18 months.
New PROPEL Series Launched
The largest collaborative effort is a new workshop series to
be offered from July 2006 through May 2007.
This workshop series, entitled PROPEL for “Primary Resources Opening
Portals to Enhance Learning,” is specifically for school librarians and media
specialists. PROPEL is designed to
extend the legacy of the AAM
program in WNC
by recognizing and enhancing the pivotal role of the school librarian in their
partnership with classroom teachers.
By completing the 30-hour PROPEL series, participants will
obtain 3 CEUs, become certified as Primary Resource Specialists, and earn a
package of material to use in further training with teachers and other
librarians. During May, the partner
directors and their staff will come together for several work sessions to
develop the content for PROPEL based on recommendations made by an advisory committee
of school librarians.
Invitations have been sent to 225 public schools and a
number of private schools in 18 WNC
counties. Already interest in PROPEL is
high. Thus far, five series have been
scheduled in various locations to maximize attendance.
In April, Pam Johnson,
Wendy Fusco, and Karin Hedberg
made a presentation to all 22 media specialists from Wilkes
County, NC,
an area previously unserved by AAM. Although this presentation was booked six
months ago, it became the perfect opportunity to talk about PROPEL. As a result of the positive response
received, it is expected that a separate series will be scheduled just for this
group.
More information about PROPEL is available at www.aamprogram.org.
Online Professional Development Tool
AAM’s
Online Education office, under the direction of Dr. Pam
Johnson, is continuing with development of an
online professional development tool.
Pam and her committee members Bonnie
Jensen, Brian Bartlett (Montreat
College),
and Oran Mosteller (Western
Carolina
University)
gathered material from 10 AAM
partners on the four topics identified in a recent survey. The survey revealed
that “How to Use Primary Sources” was the most useful topic to have as an
online tool. The content and design for the tool is underway with a projected
pilot date of June 15. The purpose of this tool is to extend the availability
of existing content submitted by AAM
partners for independent online use or as a part of a workshop.
Brevard College
Brevard AAM
is in the midst of a “Teaching with Primary Sources: Digital Storytelling”
workshop at Brevard
Elementary School. These participants will first create a
digital story using the text of the Gettysburg Address along with Civil War
images from the Library and then work with their partner teacher to create a
story on a topic of their choosing. Look
for digital story topics from this workshop in the next newsletter.
Media specialists and instructional technology specialists
from Transylvania
County
are currently submitting their digital primary source pathfinders that were
created as a result of a workshop in January entitled, “Creating Instructional
Pathfinders.” These educators have
already developed many pathfinders to meet the needs of their students and
teachers and continue to publish them online.
Participants from this workshop will receive a copy of Dreamweaver web
authoring software.
Brevard AAM
staff is deeply immersed in developing pathfinders for the online AAM
Pathfinder Resource. Many topics are
currently developed as pathfinders and are in the process of being posted
online. Simultaneously, additional
topics are being developed and will be published soon. Brevard AAM
is working with the AAM
Online Education office in its primary source tutorial endeavor so that the
online tutorials can make use of, and direct educators to, the AAM
Pathfinder Resource.
Brevard’s AAM
program website is located at: http://www.brevard.edu/aam/.
Mars Hill College
As the school year winds down, the AAM
staff at Mars
Hill
College
has completed three more Digital Storytelling workshops. Teachers from Kindergarten through high
school created digital stories that they can use in their classrooms. Future Digital Storytelling classes will benefit
from the work of these teachers.
Cane
River
Middle School
hosted a workshop for teachers from all around Yancey
County. Although every team of teachers did very good
work, Roberta
Whiteside’s story really stood out. A
music teacher, she based her story on the tradition of African American
spiritual to tell the story of families and communities who worked, struggled,
and sang together. Roberta
used her own voice to create the music that she wove into the narration of her
story. It provided for a very moving
experience.
At A.C.
Reynolds
High School,
one team of teachers, Kelli Self and Linda Crandall, used the Quilts and
Quiltmaking in America
collection to create a story that combined images with oral history. They told a first person story about the
meaning of quilting in her life followed by a connection to evaluating quilting
as an art form. Special education
teacher Peggy Waters was so excited about finding the Library of Congress Web
site that she used it in her curriculum the following day. In the vocational curriculum, students must
learn to search the Internet and download materials. She felt that her students gained much more
from using the LOC that from any other Web site that she has used in the past.
The Progressive Education Program (PEP)
also finished their workshop series. All
special education teachers, the group developed stories that ranged from
entertaining to enlightening. Among them
were stories about ABCs, trains, airplanes, careers, and one titled “When the
Work’s All
Done.” Created by Suzanne Hosch and Pam
Loftis, this is a first-person story told from the point of view of a young
farm girl. After work and chores, the
family and community gathers to play music and dance. Suzanne’s band provided the soundtrack of traditional
old time music Several teachers
commented that this was the best workshop that they had ever taken.
The Mars Hill Staff is looking forward to upcoming Digital
Storytelling workshops at Fayetteville
Technical
Community College,
Fairview
Elementary School
and on the MHC
campus.
Mars Hill’s AAM
program website is located at: http://www.mhc.edu/aamind/.
Montreat College
The workshop schedule for Montreat is beginning to slow down
as schools are preparing for end-of-grade tests and the last weeks of school.
Workshop series at Erwin High, Avery’s Creek Elementary, and North Buncombe
High ended in April with teachers excited about using the primary sources with
their students. Several of the teachers reported that they had already
integrated some of the modeled photo analysis activities into their classes
with great success.
Chase Middle will host the beginner level workshop series of
Digital Storytelling starting on April 24th. They are anticipating 20 teachers
to participate.
Registration for the Advanced Digital Storytelling summer
institutes is well underway with 28 teachers and media specialists already
signed up. Registration will remain open until May 31st.
Montreat’s AAM
program website is located at: http://aam.montreat.edu/.
Western Carolina University
The WCU AAM
partnership is in full swing with Phase II professional development
workshops. During the month of April, WCU completed the 15-hour series
with four schools and completed the series with one of three WCU teacher
education faculty groups. During May and June, nine more schools (approximately
150-200 teachers) will complete the 15-hour series.
During the next two months, WCU will be posting a variety of
digital stories, made by local K-12 teachers that demonstrate teaching modules
and model activities for students. Participating teachers have been excited
about the ease of making teaching materials out of free online computer
programs (in particular Photo Story 3 from Microsoft). This program allows
teachers to use local images/photos and sound and Library primary source images
and sounds too quickly and easily prepare teaching demonstrations for the
entire class, small groups, or individuals.
WCU’s AAM
program website is located at: http://aam.wcu.edu.
California University of Pennsylvania
Brownsville
School District
A total of 40 teachers attended the last four of six
scheduled workshops. Nine of the
teachers achieved AAM
Basic Skills certification by completing 15 hours of AAM
instruction. The workshops, “WebQuests:
An Adventure in Online Learning,” “Bringing Adventure to the Classroom,”
“Digital Storytelling: Presenting the Adventure with Audio and Visuals,” and
“Adventure with Local History: Oral Histories and Local Online Resources,” were conducted on-site during the
regular school day. Five schools from
the district were represented.
Ringgold
School District
A total of 24 teachers attended the fifth and sixth of six
scheduled workshops: “Digital Storytelling: Presenting the Adventure with Audio
and Visuals” and “Adventure with Local History: Oral Histories and Local Online
Resources.” Teachers from five schools
attended the workshops on the university’s main campus. Twelve of the teachers achieved Basic Skills
certification by completing 15 hours of AAM
instruction.
Integrating AAM
into California
University
of Pennsylvania
Six honors students in Marsha Nolf’s Information
Literacy class were indoctrinated to the Library’s Web site. Each of the students selected topics and
researched collections to find related primary sources. Students were then instructed about
inquiry-based learning as a way to further investigate the primary resources
related to their topics.
Twenty-four students in an English Composition course were
introduced to the Prints and Photographs and American Memory collections. The students were instructed to research
Alexander Graham Bell to learn about the invention of the telephone and to
recognize that others besides Bell
were working on the telephone before he was awarded the patent. The purpose of the exercise was to
demonstrate that textbooks and other secondary resources sometimes omit
important facts that could lead to further research and investigation by
writers if they were known to them.
Students learned that writers who investigate primary sources were more
likely to produce more in-depth, longer compositions than students who rely
only on secondary sources.
Veterans Oral Histories Project at California
University
of Pennsylvania
The oral history of Congressman John P. Murtha of the 12th
Congressional District was added to California
University’s
Veterans Oral Histories Project. Michael
Brna conducted the interview, and the entire oral history – along with 31
others – is available for viewing on the AAM
Web site at
http://www.cup.edu/education/aam/aamworks.jsp?pageId=1580830010421131321810329
Of the 51 oral histories collected by AAM
staff, 32 are now digitized and available on California
University’s
AAM
Web site.
CUP’s AAM
program website is located at: http://www.cup.edu/education/aam.
Waynesburg College
WC AAM
recently unveiled the second “Something to Talk About” roving display called
“It’s No Laughing Matter.” As the title indicates, political cartoons from the
LOC are highlighted. The topic featured is child labor and the display includes
historical information about the Child Labor Movement of the 1930s. The
interactive exhibit asks students, “What if this was your grandfather, or your mom?
What if this was you?” The first topic, “Black History, It’s Your History Too,”
was developed in conjunction with the Waynesburg College Black Student Union
and was recently featured on WCYJ-TV. You can view this news clip at http://wcmedia.waynesburg.edu/displayimage.php?album=254&pos=0.
The main goal of Something to Talk About is to make LOC resources personally
meaningful to students and to encourage them to think about how events from the
past impact their own lives. It also provides WC AAM
with a recruiting opportunity at each participating school.
Ed Hanley,
American history teacher at Margaret
Bell
Miller
Middle School
in Waynesburg incorporated the “Illustrated Gettysburg Address” into his eighth
grade classes after attending the “Spring Back to the Past” workshop series. WC
AAM
staff members Amy Martin
and Sue Wise
provided materials and observed as groups of students became actively engaged
in making meaning of the text by analyzing period photographs and assigning one
photo to each line of the speech. The lesson worked well with an existing unit
on Gettysburg,
as these students will be going on a field trip to the battlefield next
month.
Jefferson-Morgan
High School
technology education teacher David White also put his “Spring Back to the Past”
training to immediate use. “Visual Literacy,” led by AAM’s
assistant director, Sue Wise,
was adapted to incorporate WPA posters for the graphic arts class. The class is
also working on illustrating Franklin Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech
incorporating photographs from the LOC with their new understanding of visual
communication. The class project will be posted on the WC AAM
Web site in the near future.
“American Treasures” is a new initiative designed to help
educators integrate LOC primary source documents into the classroom.
Topic-specific documents are printed out and collected into a carrying case so
that students can hold and manipulate them. A CD collection of these items and
additional ones and a listing of lesson plan and cross-curricular ideas are
also included. This kind of hands-on learning is especially useful with younger
students and students with learning disabilities who may have difficulty
relating to or remembering text they read on a computer screen. In addition,
this resource allows classrooms not equipped with computers to access these
resources. “Thomas Jefferson: Philosopher, Patriot and Friend” and “Benjamin
Franklin: In His Own Words” are currently available for check-out. American
Treasures on other topics will be developed based on curricular needs and
teacher requests.
WC AAM
is sad to announce that Amy Martin,
digital preservationist, will be leaving her post. On May 1st she will begin a
new job as a technical specialist with a private company. Amy will continue to
be a part of the WC AAM
program as a consultant over the next summer. Amy can be reached at amartin@waynesburg.edu.
Waynesburg’s AAM
program website is located at: http://aam.waynesburg.edu.
University of South Carolina Upstate
Director Bob Pettis
recently presented at the North Carolina Association for Communication and
Technology Conference in Charlotte,
NC. Dr.
Pettis' presentation, “Instructional Uses of Digital Primary Sources,”
highlighted multimedia instructional materials created by teachers and students
that utilized digital primary sources from the American Memory
Collection. The teacher and student projects were created using PowerPoint,
Photo Story 3, and Movie Maker. The session was packed with teachers who
were unaware of the excellent primary sources found at the Library’s American
Memory Web site.
The keynote speaker for the conference was well-know
educator Kathy Schrock. During her speech, Kathy took conference
participants on an Internet tour of primary source materials. A large
segment of her presentation was devoted to the digital primary sources
found on American Memory.
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 is sharing the products teachers have developed at several
conferences this spring and summer. AAMNVA
will be a featured presentation at the spring meeting of the Virginia
Consortium of Social Studies Specialists and College Educators (VCSSSCE).
Educators from the State Department of Education, school systems statewide, and
colleges will all have an opportunity to learn about the resources available
for the state from AAMNVA.
Also this summer, AAMNVA
will offer professional development workshops at the Diversity Institute at University
of Virginia
and at Harvard’s Project Zero Classroom. Learn more about AAMNVA
conference presentations http://www.aamnva.org/conference/index.shtml
. A new Teacher Treasures newsletter is now available at http://www.pslearning.org/teach/treasure/index.shtml
this issue focuses on Library resources of interest for teaching English
language arts.
Northern Virginia’s
AAM
program website is located at: http://www.aamnva.org/.
Online
Education
Dr. Pam Johnson
presented an overview of topics available in the AAM
Online Education lessons and additional student-ready resources at the Library
of Congress on April 17 to Rutherford
County
Home
School
parents and students. Judi Darrow, a 7th grade home school student, presented
her a project completed as a follow-up to the AAM
online lesson “The Horses of Shackleford Banks” in the HARC History Fair.
Each month, the AAM
Online Education staff writes a short article on topics of interest for
educators who are using online resources as a part of their curriculum. These articles are called “Ed-U-Bits” and are
included with the monthly newsletters for home school educators and public and
private school educators. The April Ed-U-Bit is Baseball Primary
Sources: An Antidote for Spring Fever. This Ed-U-Bit includes several study
ready activities on photo analysis and fact finding using the Spaulding’s
official baseball guide.
The student’s projects page is now located in the Local
Resources section of the AAM
Home School Web site. Since students are continually adding work to this page,
staff select two lessons to highlight each month. This month’s highlighted
lessons are:
- Katelyn
Cope’s Report on Lost Colony – Katelyn located pictures, learned about
the families who left England
and established the Lost Colony, and stepped into their shoes to write an
imaginary note about what happened to them.
- Luke
Cagle’s project on the state of Hawaii – Upon
completing the Nifty Fifty lesson, Luke wrote an article,
designed a flag
and began a scrapbook
on traditions of the Hawaiian culture.
The AAM
Online Education program websites are located at: http://www.aamhomeschool.org/
http://aamonline.org/.