February will see the launch of the distance learning
version of Earth and Environmental Science for Middle and High School Teachers.
There has been intense interest in the course, with 32 participants already
subscribed. While we anticipate that some will probably drop out before the
course actually begins, we are still well on our way to serving a record number
of participants. Last year, the first time a distance learning course was
offered, the number of participants was 21, so we are seeing a significant
increase in interest with still 3 weeks to go.
With so much interest in the distance learning capability,
we are considering whether or not other workshops could be configured for
distance learning. Participants still receive lessons and activities as well as
the take-away materials that support those lessons. They will also receive a
hard copy of the course notebook in addition to having access to downloadable
material from the website. An advantage to the distance learning workshops is
that we can allow additional participants because we are not limited in
physically housing and transporting them.
Most of our summer workshops are filling rapidly. We keep
records of both those that complete applications and those that remit the $50
refundable registration fee. Although the numbers change on a daily basis, as
of January 31st, the most popular is the new Forest Ecology
workshop, with 24 enrolled (10 paid). The other workshops aren’t far behind,
with 15 (12 paid) in Earth and Environmental Science for Elementary Teachers,
12 (3 paid) in EES for Middle and High School Teachers, 11 (5 paid) for Goods
in the Woods, and 8 (2 paid) in Earth Systems Science. These are in addition to
the 32 participants registered for the distance learning workshop. Register at
our new website, www.pisgahforestinstitute.org
.
PFI
is working with other agencies to provide additional opportunities for our
workshop participants. One such add-on will be an evening on bat ecology during
the Forest Ecology workshop. Hosted by Lindsay Green of the Pisgah Wildlife and
Education
Center,
participants will work with field biologists from the US Fish & Wildlife
Service as well as the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources to
capture bats in mist nets. The bats will be identified, weighed, and studied
before being released back into the wild. Since this is an optional, additional
activity, participants can earn an extra Form B for EENC certification credit.
We are also working closely with the National Climatic Data
Center (NCDC), headquartered in Asheville,
to provide an opportunity that is integrated directly into the workshop
schedule. In the Earth Systems Science workshop, participants will spend a day
at the NCDC learning from the scientists who work there. They will show us how
they collect data and monitor climatic conditions, and show us how to utilize
that data for classroom presentations. In the other pertinent workshops,
participants will hear from a representative of the NCDC regarding local air
quality and climate. The North Carolina Geological Survey has also been very
helpful in coordinating information for our workshops that have a geological
component. We appreciate the
interactions with representatives from these various agencies as well as the
materials they provide, for they improve the quality of information available
to the PFI
workshops.
PFI's website is located at www.brevard.edu/pfi.
The 2007 KceeI brochures have arrived and are currently
being mailed. KceeI ordered 10,000
brochures this year and we plan on mailing most of these. Each past participant received 10 copies of
the brochure with a letter asking them to pass them along to a fellow educator
or put them in the teacher’s lounge at their schools. We feel this is a great
way for the brochures to circulate within the schools and the past participants
are more than happy to share them with their colleagues.
KceeI will also be sending 200 copies of its brochure to the
Pisgah
Forest Institute and the Pacific Forest Institute. During the Director’s Conference in Asheville, NC that took place in November the
three environmental education institutes discussed sharing each others
brochures as a means of cross-promoting the other institutes. KceeI is also sending its brochure to all
superintendents in the state of PA and all curriculum coordinators of
elementary and secondary schools in the state as well.
Online registration is now open for all 2007 courses. KceeI’s two upcoming one-day courses, Alternative Forest Products and Amphibians and Reptiles, are filling up
quickly as is the new course offering Astronomy. KceeI served 135 teachers in 2006 and hopes
to serve 150 in 2007. At the rate that
registration is going, this should not be an unachievable goal.
The schedule for KceeI’s new course, Astronomy, is coming together nicely. Professor Tom Cupillari has been instrumental
in developing this course which will take place the same week as the Watershed Explorers course. This will not be an issue because the Astronomy course will take place at the
Thomas G. Cupillari Astronomical Observatory, which is about 8 miles away from Keystone College.
The telescope that is the
heart of the Observatory has a history stretching back to the late 19th
century. It was constructed originally
for Beloit
College, WI, in 1882 by the firm of Alvan Clark
& Sons of Cambridgeport, MA, makers of the finest refracting lenses ever ground
in the United States. The instrument was acquired in
1967 by Dave Garroway, a television pioneer of the 1950s best known for hosting
the "Today" show on NBC.
Moving to the West Coast
from his home near Boston in 1971, Mr. Garroway decided
against taking the telescope along and advertised it for sale. Professor Tom
Cupillari saw the advertisement and wrote a letter of inquiry to Mr. Garroway.
A series of communications between the two men followed. Ultimately, Mr.
Garroway assured that Keystone would make the telescope available to students
of all ages and to the general public, rejected all other bids and chose
Keystone as the new home for his 'baby'.
Gifts to the 1972 Annual
Fund, including $5,000 from the Scranton Area Foundation, made possible the
installation of the telescope and dome and construction of the adjacent service
building. A grant from the National Science Foundation financed the purchase of
a spectroscope, Schmidt camera and photometer.
In 1996 the Clark
lens was installed in a new equatorial mount with a modern electronic drive
system.
Rated on a scale of zero to
10, zero representing perfection, the 9-1/2 inch glass in Keystone's telescope
scores about a two. This is far better than lenses from other makers and even
better than other Clark
lenses.
The best known telescopes
made by the family are the 25 inch at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, the 36 inch at the Lick
Observatory in Santa Cruz, CA, and the 40 inch at the Yerkes Observatory in
Williams Bay, WI, the largest refractor ever ground.
Just a reminder…
KceeI’s
website is located at www.KceeI.keystone.edu
Pacific Forest Institute
On Saturday, January 27th, Mark & Karen
McReynolds and Mary McFarland
attended the There were 100
exhibitors and numerous workshops for educators and parents with a special
interest in wildlife, ecology, adventure and much more. The latest in classroom materials,
environmental education programs, and field trip sites; workshops introducing
conservation & wildlife education, school gardens, and strategies for
fostering environmental awareness were presented! The event is specially designed for teachers,
community educators, students, families, and all concerned about the environment
we share. There was a good crowd this
year and many came by to check out our PFI booth.
Mark McReynolds, Program Coordinator will be attending the
first annual Bird Conservation through
Education: A
National Gathering conference, February 5-8 in Austin,
TX. It should be an exciting and informative
event. On Saturday, February 10, Mark
will lead a workshop on Flying WILD, the newest curriculum developed by the
same folks who created Project WILD. The curriculum is designed for
“middle school”, but can be adjusted up or down grade levels. On February
24th another workshop will be presented: Project WILD and Project WILD Aquatic. One can register for either workshop by
emailing us at pfi@jessup.edu. The workshops are from 9:30 am
to 4:30 pm
on the William
Jessup
University
campus in Rocklin and are free.
Flyers have been printed to advertise our two summer
workshops on “Sierra
Forest
and Society Environmental Education” to be held on June 24-29 and July 15-20, 2007. Beautiful brochures will be sent out soon to
many California
schools throughout the state.
For updated
information on the Pacific Forest Institute, please visit our website at:
http://www.jessup.edu/academics/pacificforestinstitute.
As we move into
2007, ERC Broadband is still a busy place to
be. Recently, General Manager Hunter Goosmann went to San Antonio, Texas, in support of the Asheville
Chamber's and Asheville HUB's economic development efforts. In Texas, this group ran a booth at the
annual conference of the American Meteorological Society. This was a great
opportunity to discuss the region with numerous companies who are looking to
expand their operations.
Also, ERC Broadband staff has been busy
training to support new ways of fundraising and also in entrepreneurship. Both
of these classes, and others coming up in this spring, will support the
ever-expanding business of running a regional network.
One of the goals of ERC Broadband for 2007 is to increase
community awareness of its operations and goals. To that end, staff has been
active at both the local and the state level in supporting the region's
technical growth. Our vision of empowering the region through technology is constant
and requires a lot of effort in an area that is growing so rapidly.
ERC Broadband operates two fiber rings
in Asheville with a third underway. Long haul
transport service is available through the western Carolinas to include Upstate South Carolina. ERC Broadband offers Internet as well
as transport and dark fiber on its network. Additionally, services including
disaster recovery, off-site data storage, high performance computing and
networking are offered.
ERC Broadband primarily serves the
education, government and non-profit sector as a partner in the technical
economic development of Western North Carolina. Currently ERC Broadband is an active participant
in the HUB project and works closely with UNC-Asheville, the Asheville Chamber
of Commerce, Buncombe County and other participants in planning
the technology cluster activities.
Please visit www.ercbroadband.org for more
information or call 828-350-2415.
DePaul University
DePaul
University
will participate in the DuPage Valley Social Studies Conference Institute
Day-March 2nd, Naperville,
Illinois. The conference will be attended by over 600
social studies teachers in DuPage
County. DePaul will display materials related to the
many collections of the Library of Congress, with a focus on women and the
abolitionist movement.
DePaul’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://aam.depaul.edu/.
Illinois State University
AAM
at Illinois
State
University
continues to make an impact across Central
Illinois. Staff is currently working with a
diverse group of K-12 teachers and school librarians in an online graduate
course entitled, “Teaching with Primary Sources.”
AAM
staff are excited to be working with the Professional Development Schools (PDS)
associated with ISU. The College
of Education
produces more than 10,000 teachers per year. AAM
will conduct one of its five summer institutes at the Pekin PDS,
June 11-14.
ISU-AAM
Director Richard
Satchwell was elected as Chair for the Advisory Board for the Library of
Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program at a recent Board meeting in Chicago.
Dr. Satchwell will begin his responsibilities as Chair after the March
director’s meeting in Washington
DC.
ISU’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://www.mlb.ilstu.edu/aam.
Loyola University
Loyola has been working on sending out fliers to Chicago
area schools not reached by AAM-Loyola
in the past. Schools that have not met
Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) have been at the top of the priority mailing list
this time around.
Loyola has been planning for upcoming workshops for
undergraduates in the university’s teacher preparation program. These workshops will integrate LOC navigation
with instructional uses of primary sources in science education.
With this, Loyola is also scheduling other several foundational
workshops for in-service teachers. These
in-service participants are also students in Loyola’s School
of Education
program. Working in underserved Chicago
schools, these Loyola teachers represent a wide range of specialty areas,
including elementary, secondary, and special education.
Lastly, AAM
Loyola has just gained access to create its own Web page updates on the
university server. Keep watching for
more changes and updates!
Loyola’s AAM
Web site is located at: http://www.luc.edu/schools/education/aam/index.shtml.
Metropolitan State College of Denver
Librarian Days 2007
On Friday, February 23 and Saturday, February 24, AAM-Colorado,
in conjunction with the Auraria Library and the Denver Newspaper Agency, will
host the third annual Librarian Days, “Educating the Digital Learner: 21st
Century Learning, Literacy and Thinking.” This two-day event offers educators
from across the state of Colorado
the opportunity to learn about the American Memory Web site and instructional
applications for using digital resources in the classroom. Instructional professionals throughout Colorado
are invited to attend a full day of presentations free of charge on Friday and
bring a teacher of their choice.
On Saturday, all educators are welcome to sign up for one or
two half-day workshops also free of charge.
For the past two years, Librarian Days has been widely acclaimed and
highly successful. Staff look forward to
another exciting and informative event.
Colorado
Council for the Social Studies
Dr. Laura McCall, MSCD Professor of History, Susan Joseph,
Visiting Professor of Education, and AAM-Colorado
Director Peggy O’Neill-Jones are scheduled to present “Discovering, Inquiring
and Applying Digitized Primary Resources in the Classroom” at the Colorado
Council for the Social Studies conference on March 9, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency
Tech Center in Denver.
Partnership with Jefferson
County
School District
AAM-Colorado
and Jefferson County School District, the largest district in the state, plan
to implement a program “to improve teachers’ appreciation for and knowledge of
traditional American history through intensive, on-going professional
development” after the district received a three-year, $950,198 Teaching
American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Read more at http://www.mscd.edu/~collcom/artman/publish/aamco_twv3062106.shtml.
MSCD’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu.
Southern
Illinois University Carbondale
SIUC AAM/TPS
recruited 22 in-service teachers for EDUC
550: “An Adventure of the American Mind,” the three-hour graduate level course
based on the Library of Congress’ American Memory Web site. The Spring
2007 cohort met for the first time on January 27th. Topics for the first
meeting included:
- An
Overview of the Library of Congress
- Digital
Primary Sources at American Memory and the Library of Congress
- Background
for Adventure of the American Mind and Teaching with Primary Sources
- Goals
of Teaching with Primary Sources
- Overview
of EDUC:
An Adventure of the American Mind
- Exploring
American Memory and the Library of Congress Website
Teachers will complete the three-hour course by producing
teaching units based on Library digital primary sources, including lesson
plans, multimedia productions, and Web-based instructional components.
Teachers work in small groups which address the development of
subject/grade level instructional units based on American Memory digital
primary sources. Participation in the AAM
program at SIUC includes a semester in the graduate class, summer workshops and
seminars, and in the fall semester, implementation of the teaching unit in a
classroom setting.
SIUC AAM/TPS
staff is working with public school AAM
associates in developing the concept for the Teaching with Primary Sources
(TPS) program. Transition to TPS will begin during summer 2007 and
implementation is planned for fall 2007. Fourteen in-service teachers
completed EDUC
550 in the fall semester and will complete the requirements of the program by
presenting workshops and seminars during the spring semester. Refresher
courses are planned for the summer semester.
SIUC AAM/TPS
staff continue to make presentations to College
of Education
and Human Services classes at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.
At the undergraduate level, pre-service teachers express great enthusiasm
about the digital primary sources at the Library of Congress and American
Memory. They learn how the Learning Page can serve as a valuable resource
in their course work and future teaching career.
SIU-E’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://www.siue.edu/education/aam.
Southern
Illinois University-Edwardsville
In January, SIUE AAM
reached many in-service teachers from various locations by delivering three
workshop series, each 12 hours in length.
Two series were given to middle and high school teachers hosted by
Madison County Regional Office of Education (ROE) in Edwardsville. Lewis
& Clark Junior
High School in Woodriver also
completed a 12-hour workshop series.
An AAM
presentation was given to 16 pre-service students from Greenville
College
for a K-9 social studies methods course.
A plan to expand pre-service presentations to the SIUE's College
of Art & Science department is underway.
SIUE’s AAM
program Web site is located at: http://www.siue.edu/education/aam.