On Saturday
29 April the Pisgah Forest Institute (PFI) concluded its "PFI Earth/Environmental Science
Workshop for
Middle and High School Teachers: A Distance Learning Experience" with a
field exercise in the Pisgah National Forest. The primary objective of this
offering, which started on February 11, was to enable educators who were not
able to attend the Institute's Summer offerings, gain access to the information
conveyed in those June - July courses. It took more than two years of
preparation before the distance learning course could be given. Most of the
delays involved locating the computer "platform" that was most
applicable for conveying the course. The content of the workshop was initially
drafted by AmeriCorps volunteer Elizabeth Kampouris. When her appointment with PFI concluded last July, PFI Assistant David Funderburk took
over the task of finishing drafting the course materials. He was assisted
by PFI Operations Coordinator Heather
Cosby and Assistant Operations Coordinator Jessica Sharp. Heather's graphics
considerably enhanced the appearance of the written materials. PFI Media Operation
Specialist Jayne Hall helped to remedy numerous computer problems as well
as made other beneficial contributions. Throughout the course David reviewed the
required written materials submitted by each enrollee. The latter came
from as far away as Pennsylvania as well as throughout North Carolina. The participants each
received most of the takeaways that are given to those enrolled in the six
day E/ES for Middle and High School Teachers workshop.
The
feedback from the students who took the above course was very positive. Their
suggestions will be of considerable aid if and when the distance learning
course is offered in the future.
Brevard
College Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. John S.
Hardt announced on 28 April the appointment of Dr. Jennifer E. Frick-Ruppert as
the new Executive Director of the Appalachian Center for Environmental Studies
(ACEE) effective May
15, 2006. ACEE will be the umbrella organization
which will include the Pisgah Forest Institute. The position of Executive
Director of the latter will be eliminated. Dr. Sweeney, who has held the latter
post for more than five years, will remain in that position on
a full-time basis through June 30. More will be related about Dr.
Frick-Ruppert, who will continue to function on a half-time basis as a
teacher at the College in her capacity as an Associate Professor of
Ecology and Environmental Studies in the Environmental Studies, Mathematics and
Natural Sciences (ESMNS) Division, in a later issue of this newsletter.
Both Jayne
Hall and David Funderburk both were honored at the ESMNS Awards Ceremony that
was held last week. Both of these students received their bachelors
degree at the Brevard College May commencement exercise. Each
again will be working fulltime with PFI this summer prior to going on
to other endeavors.
PFI's
website is located at www.brevard.edu/pfi.
The Lackawanna and Wyoming counties Envirothon took place on
Wednesday, May 10 at Keystone College.
Tim Eichner, Director of the Water Resource Center and Assistant Director of KceeI,
coordinated the event. Sixteen teams of
students from local high schools participated.
They competed in topic areas such as: invasive species, wildlife,
forestry, aquatics, soils, managing water resources, and citizen science. It turned out to be a beautiful, sunny day
and everyone’s spirits were high. This
was the 21st annual Envirothon.
Taking second place this year, from Lackawanna County, was the Lakeland High School Red
Team. For the second year in a row, the Lackawanna Trail High School, Trailblazers, from Wyoming County, won first place. Members from both teams participated in the
Envirothon course which was offered through Keystone College in the fall semester of 2005 and
was taught by Tim Eichner. The winning
team will go onto compete in the PA State Envirothon from May 22nd –
23rd at the Penn State Mont
Alto campus. Congratulations and
best of luck!
KceeI is finalizing plans for the upcoming Watershed Explorers course from June
18-23. Enrollment is full at 25
participants. Nora Dillon, Operations Coordinator for KceeI,
had been busy organizing educational materials and putting together resource
binders for each of the teachers to take home.
Just as previous years, this course will include an all day “Watershed
Tour” where participants in the course will have the opportunity to observe
local issues related to the watershed.
The facilitators that will be involved in the Watershed Explorers course come from a
variety of local agencies. They are: The
DCNR, The USDA Forest Service, The Lackawanna County Department of Parks and
Recreation, Countryside Conservancy (a local land trust), The PA Department of
Environmental Protection, The Lackawanna County Conservation District, The
Wyoming County Conservation District, The Lackawanna River Corridor
Association, as well as professors from Keystone College.
We are looking forward to a successful course.
The schedule for the additional upcoming KceeI courses is as
follows:
- Forests and Society (Forest Stewardship) July 16th – July 21st
- Exotic and Invasive Species July 23rd – July 26th
- Geology of Northeastern PA July 23rd – July 28th
Keystone College finals ended on Friday, May 5 and
Commencement was held one week later on Saturday, May 13. Besides a few passing showers, the weather
was mostly fair for the graduates. Of
course it chose to rain on this day after having about 15 consecutive days with
no precipitation at all!
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.
ERC
Broadband continues to be very active in support of regional economic
development opportunities. Hunter Goosmann and
his staff work closely with all groups who wish to develop programs that will
benefit the region, especially a relationship and/or partnership with the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Climatic Data Center,
which houses the world's largest collection of weather data. Other entities
include the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI), located in Rosman, NC. PARI
is a not-for-profit public foundation dedicated to providing research and
educational access to radio and optical astronomy for a broad cross-section of
users. Pre-college through post-graduate students have the opportunity to work
and learn with full time and visiting astronomers. You can learn more about
PARI by visiting www.pari.edu.
ERC Broadband’s website is located at: www.ercbroadband.org.
DePaul University
DePaul participated in Northwestern
University’s
ninth annual symposium for the Collaboratory Project. The symposium was attended by 300 teachers
and administrators from Illinois. DePaul’s presentation, History in the
Collaboratory, was a joint presentation with Ms. Courtney Vaccaro of Best
Practice
High School
in Chicago. Ms. Vaccaro’s Unit Plan on African American
History and Visual Literacy was recognized by the reading specialist of Chicago
Public Schools (CPS)
as a model activity to enhance literacy at the high school level.
DePaul will conduct a summer institute for CPS’s
Department of Libraries and Information
Systems. The summer institute will be
planned with the director of the department and will reflect the needs of the
librarians.
DePaul will conduct School
of Education
faculty development training, June 12th to June 16th. Ten full-time faculty members from the School
of Education
will participate in the program.
DePaul’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://aam.depaul.edu/.
Governors State University
April showers in Chicagoland made not only the flowers grow
but also the GSU-AAM
program. More than 100 teachers from 19
school districts have been nominated by their principals to participate in the
Elite Level training for 2006-07 school year.
Since less than 50 percent will be accepted, the process of assessing
their application against the acceptance criteria is underway. Acceptance is determined by whether they have
a team or a partner, their interest in publishing their primary source project,
and support from their school administration for their teachers participating
in the GSU-AAM
program.
The good news is that a significant number of teachers are
willing to commit to over 60 hours of training along with a one-year
post-training obligation. Every single
applicant indicated that they wanted to participate because they had heard so
much about the AAM
program at GSU and had seen some of phenomenal projects teachers had created. The bad news still is that more than half
will be rejected.
GSU faculty who participate in Elite Level Training a year
ago reconvened for their final assessment session. Each shared what they have done or are doing
with their project and the AAM
training. One participant was headed for
an international education conference in Turkey
in May. She presented and also conducted
a workshop on Teaching with Primary Sources from the Library of Congress. A math professor has been accepted to present
at National Council of Teachers of Mathematics national conference this fall.
As one group of professors ends their year-long journey,
another group commences. At the end of
April, an intensive Elite Level training (60 hours) began for 20
university-level professors. This group
was amazing. They embraced using primary
sources from LOC and bear-hugged inquiry/problem-based learning. At about the three-quarter point in the
training, one professor said it for all:
“This has made me re-think about how I approach teaching all my
courses. This training has made me see
that I need to change how I teach. I
have never in my life as a professor ever had training at this level. I am so excited about my teaching
again!” For university professors to
exclaim that the impact of this training will result in a major change in their
teaching strategies is just plain huge.
Just think about all the students that will be touched by professors who
are constructivists using LOC primary sources in the courses they teach.
Feedback from the 2005-06 Elite Training Alumni indicates
that they are conducting a record number of 12-hour primary source
workshops. Some have held training
sessions within their school, some have become district-level trainers, and a
few have established themselves as trainers at some of the Illinois LEAs. It appears that the GSU-AAM
pyramid model is continuing to exponentially increase the number of people
participating in LOC primary source training session.
Planning and registration for the June workshop series in
Digital Storytelling with LOC Digital Primary Sources is underway. These are three-day training sessions and are
only offered to Elite Level Alumni. GSU
must be doing something right since sections filled within 24 hours of being
advertised, which is an indication how the alumni view the training at
GSU. If alumni were not enthralled they
surely would not come back for more.
These workshops are modeled after the Mars Hill College DST
Level I and II series.
Last, Mary Moley,
a fall 2005 Elite Alumni, has brought a new alliance to the GSU-AAM
program. As she continues to expand her
original project, Tell Me a
Story, she wanted to use StoryCorps, a nationwide initiative of Sound Portraits
Productions, to record and collect oral history interviews. She is integrating LOC primary sources with
oral histories by having her elementary students record the histories within
their own projects and post them on the web.
Now GSU had to offer StoryCorps information regarding AAM’s
purpose and mission along with proof that it is not-for-profit before they
would give GSU permission for Mary to do this.
This is quite exciting since it now gives those who do projects,
especially with young children, the opportunity to use this national repository
within their LOC primary source projects.
Governors
State’s
AAM
program Web site is located at: http://aam.govst.edu/.
Eastern
Illinois University
Eastern Illinois University AAM
is preparing for a very busy summer collaborating with East Central Illinois
educators. A group of educators teaching
at Hutsonville Elementary, Junior High, and High schools recently hosted the
EIU AAM
staff for two full days of professional development and collaboration. Workshop series are scheduled be held with
teachers at Casey-Westfield Elementary and Junior High schools and Tuscola
Middle School and High School in the coming weeks. “Enhancing Instruction by Improving Student
Multimedia Skills with Library of Congress Primary Sources” was the theme of
the EIU AAM
presentation at the “Connections Conference” in Springfield. The presentation drew an enthusiastic crowd
of educators from across Illinois.
During the month of April 2006 alone, 1,447 users visited
the EIU AAM
website for a total of 2,590 hits. The
EIU AAM
newsletter was visited by 406 unique users.
The April edition of the EIU AAM
Newsletter featured a theme of “Alcohol Awareness and Prohibition” and
identified Library of Congress digitized primary sources and collections that
could be used to deepen student understanding of this topic.
EIU’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://www.eiu.edu/~eiuaam/.
Southern
Illinois University-Carbondale
SIUC AAM
has recruited 20 in-service teachers for enrollment in the three-hour graduate
level course, EDUC
550-An Adventure of the American Mind. Currently the enrollees are
expected to complete a series of workshop activities that include an
Introduction to American Memory and the Library of Congress using primary
sources in teaching, searching and downloading primary source materials from
American Memory and the LOC, and downloading and using images from American
Memory and the LOC. In-service teachers are expected to develop detailed
lesson plans that address Illinois Learning Standards and incorporate primary
source material they have identified from the Library. A further
expectation is that the instructional modules will be shared with the Master of
Arts in Teaching (MAT)
cohort that will enroll in an additional section of EDUC
550 during the summer semester. The current projection is that 20 MAT
students will be enrolled during the summer.
SIUC seeks to develop collaborative instructional design and
development between in-service teachers and MAT
during summer 2006 semester based on primary source materials that have been
identified and downloaded from LOC. Additional collaborative activities
will incorporate materials adapted from the Learning Page for use during the MAT
students teaching semester and in the in-service teacher classrooms.
SIUC AAM
staff continue providing classroom guest lectures regarding Library digital
primary source materials. Staff have involved undergraduate education
majors in activities using the materials available through the American Memory
Learning Page.
SIU-C’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://aam.siu.edu/.
Southern
Illinois University-Edwardsville
AAM
SIUE continues to work with the first cohort of MAT
pre-service teachers as they wrap up their presentations and master
projects. Preparation and planning has begun for the second cohort
to begin at the end of June during the summer semester.
A promotional flyer for the upcoming AAM
graduate course in July and August has been displayed and mailed to regional
offices, school districts, and schools. This course section is unique
since any SIUE graduate student is allowed to enroll. Previously, the AAM
graduate course was “consent of instructor” only.
The AAM
SIUE team attended the SIUE’s Library and Information
Services spring colloquium on the current state of academic libraries and the
growth of online information in the 21st Century titled, “If We Have Google,
Why Do We Need Libraries?” on April 13 on campus. The presenters from
OCLC and Indiana
University
were extremely insightful regarding the role of the library and how students
conduct research today.
SIU-E’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://www.siue.edu/education/aam.
Metropolitan State College of Denver
AAM-Colorado
plans to present at several upcoming conferences. Educators attending any of
the conferences below are invited to look for AAM-Colorado's
presentation:
Post-News
Educational Services 2006 Summer Teacher Conference, Arapahoe
Community College
(June 16)
Technology
in Education Conference, Copper
Mountain, Colorado
(June 20 - 23)
Colorado
Association of Libraries, Denver,
Colorado
(November 9 - 12)
Regretfully, AAM-Colorado
says goodbye to Administrative Assistant Augustine Maestas, as he accepts a
position with Metro
State’s
Office of College Communications. Augie will be missed!
MSCD’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu.
Quincy University
Quincy
University
will begin workshops May 22nd. The first two workshops will be
implemented with Quincy
University
faculty. The next four this summer will be K-12 faculty workshops. As Patrons
of The Library, each will connect to a primary resource, follow his/her
curiosity about that source, and creatively express this journey in an original
artifact. Judy Graves from the Library
of Congress will be assisting with video conferencing. All
of these workshops will be hands-on and will qualify participants for
CPDU’s. In addition, participants can
register for graduate credit.
Equipment has been arriving. The printer for copying
workshop materials, laptops for use during workshops have come, and a wireless
room is being configured. A new website has been setup, though nothing is ready
for public viewing yet. Two applications for the digital preservationist have
been received. Interviews are following, but no one will be on site before the
first workshops are presented.
Quincy’s
AAM
program Web site is located at:
http://www.aamprogram.org/introduction/aam_partners_detail.aspx?id=29.