During
January, February, and March, PFI has been busy offering its distance
learning version of the Earth and Environmental Science Workshop for Middle and
High School Teachers. The workshop began on February 16 and will soon end,
eight weeks later, on April 14. This workshop carries the same basic
information, take-away materials, lessons, and activities as our summer
workshop, but is conducted entirely on-line. Participants take quizzes,
evaluate lessons, and submit a lesson plan all on-line. This year, we updated
our chat-room so that participants have a better experience communicating with
each other. We post questions that participants answer, and participants also
respond to each other’s postings. There is even a place where participants can
post random questions to each other, asking, for instance, about how particular
lesson plans work in their classrooms or where to order materials. This site is
password protected so that only participants in the workshop have access to
each other and to the material posted. Student staff members Austin Brodfuhrer
and Kisha Fouch have been particularly helpful in this technology-dependent
workshop.
Staff
members Jennifer Frick-Ruppert and Kevin Fischer have also attended conferences
where we made some valuable contacts with other professional educators and
advertised the PFI programs. The annual PEAK
(Preparing Educators for Adventures with Kids) conference at nearby YMCA Camp
Greenville was the weekend of February 7-9th . PEAK is attended
mainly by camp counselors and outdoor educators from the South Carolina-North
Carolina-Georgia region. We renewed acquaintances with former participants and
even PFI summer staffers such as David
Funderburk, who is currently working for an environmental education center in Georgia. Kevin and Jennifer led a session
that featured PFI programs and activities, and were
warmly received by the session attendees. Kevin also attended the Association
of Experiential Education (AEE) Southeast Regional Conference over the weekend of March
14-16th. It was also
conveniently held at the YMCA Camp Greenville, but attracted a different group
of participants. These experiential educators were drawn from the larger
southeast region and included a more diverse group of professionals, college
professors, and other experiential educators. Both conferences gave us an
opportunity to attract new participants to PFI.
Summer workshops are open for
registration, but are filling fast. Earth and Environmental Science (EES) for
Middle and High School Teachers will run from June 15-20, and EES for
Elementary Teachers is from June 22-27. Our two 3-day workshops will run
back-to-back, making it convenient, we hope, for educators to take both short
workshops if they wish. Recycling and Composting in the Classroom will run July
13-15, and the brand-new Forest Invasives is from July 16-18. We are working
with specialists in invasive species from the USDA Forest Service’s Southern
Research Station headquartered in Asheville to offer this workshop. Student
intern Chad Campbell has been the main force behind the development of the
wonderful notebook that participants will receive in this workshop. Our final
workshop will be Forest Ecology, from July 20-25. Last year, the first offering
of this workshop had a waiting list, so we are offering it again this year to
hopefully accommodate more interested participants. We will once again be
comparing different forest ecosystems, from high elevation forests to
Appalachian cove forests, and from old growth to managed forests. All workshops carry continuing
education (CEU) credits as well as credit toward certification as a North
Carolina Environmental Educator. Registration is open on our website (www.pisgahforestinstitute.org).
And remember, if you are from Rutherford County, NC or have a friend there,
encourage them to attend one of our summer workshops. We have a grant from an
anonymous donor to
support teachers from Rutherford County
. Keystone College Environmental Education Institute
A lot has been happening at KceeI
since the last newsletter. The
promotional DVD that we recently produced about the institute has been posted on our
website at http://kceei.keystone.edu/#video. We also had a number of copies made and sent
them to a select group of past participants for them to show in their
schools. Howard Jennings, director of KceeI, also made sure
that this DVD was shown at the Keystone College Opening Faculty meeting, the
President’s Advisory Council, the Keystone College Trustee meeting, and to the
Northeast Education Intermediate Unit (NEIU-19). We have received a lot of positive feedback
and we hope that this DVD continues to be an effective promotional tool.
As we continue to receive registrations for this summer’s
courses, we have been given official word that KceeI’s newest course, Climate Change and the Energy Challenge,
has been approved for CPE credit through the NEIU-19 as well as Wilkes University
Graduate Education Credits. We are still
in the process of building this course but it’s coming together nicely and we
expect it to be very successful. As the
newest of our courses, it will probably be the first one to fill up.
As part of the Climate
Change and the Energy Challenge course, one day will be devoted to the
Educational Global Climate Modeling Project (EdGCM). KceeI is brining in key
facilitators from this project based out of Columbia University.
It focuses on a suite of software that allows teachers to introduce the
world of climate simulation to their students in a hands-on fashion. Built
around a research-grade NASA climate model, but designed to run with a
user-friendly interface on PC and Mac desktops in the classroom, EdGCM offers
both students and teachers the ability to explore past climates as well as
future climate change scenarios.
Several climate simulations are included with the software,
but teachers and students can also create their own climate scenarios. The
EdGCM suite allows students to follow the scientific modeling process from
beginning to end: students run simulations, analyze model output, display climate
diagnostics in map or plot form, and create reports with illustrations that can
be published on the internet. Teachers can elect to emphasize different aspects
of the EdGCM suite, as is most appropriate for the topic being taught and the
lecture time available. We are very
happy to have EdGCM as part of this course.
Just a reminder, KceeI will offer the following courses this
summer:
- Astronomy - Sunday,
June 22nd – Friday, June
27th, 2008
- Watershed
Explorers - Sunday, June 22nd – Friday, June 27th, 2008
- Forests and
Society – Sunday, July 13th – Friday, July 18th, 2008
- Climate Change
and the Energy Challenge
– Sunday, July 20th – Friday,
July 25th, 2008
2008 has been a record year for the number of brochures
mailed. Over 12,000 KceeI brochures have
been mailed to teachers in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey.
The cover for this year’s brochure was taken by George Boudman, a
graduate of Keystone College and an excellent photographer! George also took the picture of the pileated
woodpecker for the 2007 brochure.
Thanks, George!
Nora Dillon, Operations Coordinator for KceeI,
has been busy securing facilitators and ordering educational resources and
materials for this year’s courses. She
has been focusing on finding organizations that provide free educational
resources for teachers. There is a lot
out there you just have to find it!
In other news, KceeI has confirmed two more keynote
speakers. Alex Fried, Proctor &
Gamble Public Relations and Energy Affairs Manager will present the Keynote Address
for the Watershed Explorers
course. Alex will focus on the topic of
International Water Issues and Diseases.
The keynote speaker for the Astronomy course will be newly appointed Keystone College Astronomy
professor, Douglas O'Neal, Ph.D. Recently,
Dr. O’Neal received a grant from the American Astronomical Society to attend a
prestigious research conference this summer featuring astronomers and astronomy
professors from around the world. He
will attend and present research at the 15th Cambridge Workshop on "Cool
Stars, Stellar Systems and the Sun" July 21-25 at St. Andrews, Scotland.
KceeI’s
website is located at www.KceeI.keystone.edu
PACIFIC FOREST
INSTITUTE
In January, our host William Jessup
University (WJU) published an article by Director Mark McReynolds about the Nature preserve that we
are working on in their Winter Broadcaster
eMagazine. This was the first public
notice of the preserve plans. This
preserve is used as a lab for our workshops and is a valuable part of the
educational experience of William Jessup University students. We also submitted a grant application to the
Sierra Nevada Conservancy to run a week-long American River workshop and welcomed
Dennis Conrad as our first Program Volunteer.
Dennis is a former teacher and has a wealth of experience to share with
us.
In
February, PFI was mentioned in the
California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom's e-newsletter, Current News. PFI also ran two full day
workshops. One was a facilitator's
workshop all about bird education called Flying WILD. Once trained, facilitators take their
knowledge and spread it to other teachers.
The second workshop was about water called Project WET (Water Education
for Teachers). Dennis was trained in
bird monitoring protocol and has taken over this activity. Teachers and WJU community members are often
surprised that our growing bird list is just shy of 100 species. This month we also put significant time into
design of the summer workshop brochure and we also received notice that the
Preserve plans were approved by the City of Rocklin. Previously solicited bids were reviewed and a
landscape architect and interpretive sign designer hired.
March was busy. We planned for and executed a two-session
Flying WILD bird festival workshop for the California League of Middle Schools
annual convention in Sacramento and had 19 participants. A second workshop, The Birds and The Trees,
was run in cooperation with the local Placer Nature Center, and combined Project Learning Tree
with FIying WILD. Director, Mark McReynolds, was also a co-presenter at a state
convention on service-learning.
Service-learning is done by students, but requires teacher training and
a site, and PFI can provide both. An example of this is a local teacher
attended one of our a Project Learning Tree workshops last year, wrote a grant
and now has plans of adding Blue-bird nest boxes to the preserve as a
service-learning project. Dennis Conrad was trained in plant collection protocol and
has taken over this activity. Samples
are being sent to a local professional botanist who is doing volunteer
identification work for us. We will
eventually have a good collection of all the plants of WJU and this is useful
for management of the preserve and WJU classes.
PFI staff and WJU faculty
were in attendance at a dinner in honor of our former Director Bill Dennison, who received a
lifetime distinguished service award from the state Board of Forestry.
PFI staff worked on development of the
summer workshops, PFI's page on the WJU web site,
assisted in the planning of WJU's Earth Day festivities in April and are
looking forward to the summer.
Pacific
Forest Institute's website is located at: http://www.jessup.edu/academics/pacificforestinstitute.
January
2: General Manager, Hunter Goosmann,
attended the 2008 North Carolina Chamber Economic forum in RTP.
"Western Carolina University Chancellor John
Bardo lead a panel discussion of the mountains'
economic development initiatives. Dale Carroll, CEO of the AdvantageWest
Economic Development Group, provided an update on the status of the mountain
region's Five-Year Vision Plan" (www.advantagewest.com).
January
15: Hunter Goosmann and Jeremiah
Jackson, of the ERC
Broadband, attended the Foothills Connect
Symposium. The focus of the symposium was the need for greater connectivity in
Rutherford and Polk counties. Several speakers addressed the urgency for a
sound solution to promote business and industry in this area of North
Carolina.
January
21-25: Hunter Goosmann was
in New Orleans at
the 2008 American Meteorological Society conference with the Asheville Chamber
of Commerce and other groups who are promoting Asheville as a
destination for weather companies to move their facilities and, in doing so,
partner with the ERC
Broadband for technological infrastructure needs
and weather data connectivity.
January
22: Theo Lavis,
Network Administrator, and Deborah Roberts,
Business Development Manager, attended the Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council
meeting in Asheville
which outlined streamlining a company through established business processes.
This event synced nicely with our recent deployment of the customer resource
management software "Info-at-hand".
January
29: Jeremiah Jackson, a
member of the Haywood Community College Technology Advisory Committee, met with
other members to discuss future classes for incorporation into the CIS and
Networking curriculums.
February
6: Jeremiah Jackson,
Systems Administrator, was in Raleigh at
the IT Oversite Committee Meeting. The focus of the meeting was to provide a
breakdown of technology funding and expenses for the K-12 connectivity project
that is currently underway in North
Carolina.
February
13: Deborah Roberts
traveled to Oak Ridge National Laboratory with a group from Western
North Carolina for a tour and to obtain information on
how future partnerships can be created with the lab. ORNL is very interested in
WNC
because of location proximity and the creative technology community that
thrives here.
February
21: Deborah Roberts
attended the annual AdvantageWest board meeting which included the announcement
of Advantage Green, which will promote a sustainable and renewable energy
industry in Western North Carolina for
what is coined the "green economy".
February
28: Todd Fisher and Steve Poland with the Technology Commercialization Center
toured the ERC
Broadband facility and met with our team about
ways we might partner with ORNL. TCC
implements a stage-based client development program for deployment of a
fundable and sustainable business model for small businesses in WNC and
is located at the AB Tech Enka Campus small business center.
March
20: Mark Haney,
Senior Systems Administrator, had his first meeting of the AB Tech Networking
Technology Advisory Committee. This is a two-year termed committee that makes
recommendations on the curriculum of the Networking Technology degree program
at the school.
The ERC
Broadband team submitted appropriations requests
to Congressman Shuler, Senator Dole and Senator Burr in the first quarter of
2008 for the next funding cycle. These requests were supported by community
leaders, other non-profit organizations and the private sector. We hope to get
updates on the status of our requests in the next couple of months.
Jeremiah
Jackson will be leaving the ERC
Broadband as of April 11. Jeremiah has accepted a
position that requires he move out of the area. The ERC
Broadband team wishes him the best and would like
to thank him for all his contributions to our organization over the last two
years. He has been a great asset and an inspiration to our vision.
AAM Central Office
AAM staff are engaged in a new
initiative this year in cooperation with Mars Hill College,
Buncombe County Schools, and WeatherBug®. Entitled “World Wide Weather: Making the Most
of Online Resources to Understand Weather and its Effect on our Daily Lives,”
the project is now underway with seven area elementary schools involving 22
teachers. Teachers will complete 14
hours of workshop time, then prepare a class project for students to
complete. Students will work in teams to
complete their assignments and project goals, then create an exhibit for a
competitive Share Fair to be held in April.
Designed as
a multi-disciplinary literacy project, WWW focuses on the study of weather by
combining several learning elements: 1)
the science of weather; 2) using online newspapers and tools to study how
weather impacts community preparedness and response; 3) comparing and
contrasting weather and community events in two or more locales; and 4)
studying historic weather events and comparing these with present-day
events. The schools will each use
WeatherBug as the primary online curriculum for studying present-day weather,
but will also use resources from NOAA, the National Weather Service, and
others.
But this
project is unique in AAM in targeting the science curriculum
in particular. Even though AAM had worked with WeatherBug before,
the idea for WWW was born when the Library launched its “Chronicling America” collection
in early 2007. It turns out that weather
was as popular a front-page topic a century ago as it is today! Now with access to a searchable database of
thousands of 100-year-old newspapers, students will be able to read about
historic weather events, weather forecasting, emergency response, and community
preparation. For example, one Florida newspaper reports the impacts of a
serious drought in Georgia in 1909. Because Western North Carolina is now in a severe drought, these
two events can form the basis of a student project study using current online
data and resources together with newspapers, personal accounts, photos,
recordings, and films from the Library of Congress. But the newspapers alone will provide a rich
perspective on how our understanding of weather has changed and our access to
credible weather information has improved our ability to prepare for it.
On January
16, teachers will complete their final workshop, then continue planning and
implementing their projects. AAM staff have been making site visits
to each school and will be monitoring progress throughout the spring.
AAM recently received an inquiry from a
McDowell County junior high school that is also
interested in a WWW-type project for their grade 7-9 science teachers that will
also use both WeatherBug and the Chronicling America collection. Planning is underway and the first workshop
is planned for February 1.
The WWW workshop series is being taught by Bob Pettis and Karin Hedberg from AAM, AnneMarie Walter from Mars Hill
College, Jane
Milner
and Conni
Mulligan from Buncombe County Schools, and Diana Dell from WeatherBug.
More
information about AAM in WNC is available at www.aamprogram.org, www.aamlearning.org, and at the
individual partner websites at http://www.brevard.edu/aam/,
http://www.faytechcc.edu/scholars/,
http://www.mhc.edu/aamind/,
http://aam.montreat.edu/, and http://aam.wcu.edu.
Fayetteville Technical Community College & Wingate University
During this
first quarter, AAM staff have been engaged in ordering
materials and laptops, recruiting students, and getting the classes
ready. The first class began January 7.
More about FTCC’s progress will be reported in April.
Mars Hill College
As the new
semester starts up, AnneMarie Walter and Dr. Tom Destino will repeat their
successful primary source activities with the pre-service teachers as they
create their capstone projects. ED470
Diversity in American Schools serves to ensure that graduating seniors and
licensure-only candidates demonstrate understanding of ways to reach every
student, including the use of hands-on primary source-based learning
objects. Walter, Destino, and AAM alumnae Polly Johnson will discuss
and demonstrate a number of ways to use primary sources, and Walter will lead a
guided lab as the pre-service teachers develop their own classroom
activities.
After
co-facilitating a professional development workshop in the fall, Walter is now
updating the North Buncombe High School Literacy in Secondary Schools
website. Many of the teachers have
submitted their suggestions for additional content suitable for their
students.
In
addition, Walter will be teaching two sections of CS200, Computer Applications
for Educators to pre-service teachers at Mars Hill.
Montreat College
During the
fall semester, the Montreat AAM partner spent most of the term
planning for the spring. The PROPEL curriculum created by the Western North
Carolina AAM partners has been restructured and
will be used as a spring workshop series for Montreat undergraduate teacher
education majors. The original plan called for 3rd-5th grade in-service
teachers to work with the pre-service teachers; however, due to low interest
from the in-service teachers, the plan has been modified and the spring series
will consist of pre-service teachers only. The low interest is not a surprise
since state-mandated testing occurs in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades, a process
which increases teachers’ already busy workloads. Therefore, the workshop
series will target pre-service teachers preparing for their junior student
teaching. A goal for the AAM partner at Montreat is to also host
a workshop series for the entire Teacher Education Department. The AAM director is currently working with
the Education Department chair to make the necessary arrangements for this
series to occur.
In addition to restructuring the PROPEL curriculum and preparing materials for
the pre-service teachers, the AAM computer lab was upgraded to a
mobile laptop lab. Since the classes at Montreat are relatively small, the
mobile lab will allow for multiple classes to be using the computers at the
same time. Both AAM and the Teacher Education
Department are excited about the learning opportunities this new lab design will
bring.
Western Carolina University
The Western
Carolina University AAM project participants (WCU faculty)
have completed formal workshops and are preparing to teach Library of Congress
American Memory primary sources utilization beginning in February. All AAM faculty members are preparing for a
final group meeting on January 26th where they will show-and-tell their
lessons. At the request of several WCU AAM faculty members, AAM personnel will model teaching their
classes how to use the Library of Congress during February and March.
Activities created by students of the AAM faculty will be collected,
evaluated, and posted to a pathfinder database which will demonstrate various
ways to use Library primary sources in a wide variety of fields. These resources
will be available to other faculty and to the K-12 community. At the completion
of the semester, AAM faculty classes will be asked to
complete reflections of the AAM component of their course.
Work with the Mountain Heritage Center to take over web housing and
continued maintenance of WCU AAM materials has begun. The design and
work flow process is being developed. Using materials created during PROPEL,
WCU has completed standardization of 27 “help sheets” that will be the first
items placed on the AAM section of Mountain Heritage Center web site. The help sheets topics
include: Activity Instructions, Analysis Forms, Primary Sources, Images, Using
the Library of Congress, Maps, Posters, Sound, Video, and Primary Sources in
Newsletters. Additional help sheets will be completed during spring semester.
Additionally, all AAM Online Education materials and
lessons have been given to the Mountain Heritage Center to house on their server.
Pathfinders from PROPEL have been completed and posted online. WCU teacher-made
unit plans and lesson plans from Phase I are being reviewed and prepared for
future posting on the Mountain Heritage web site. Lesson plans, pathfinders,
and additional materials used for lessons created by WCU-AAM faculty are being developed using
standardized templates and forms and will web-ready and loaded to the website.
Faculty will have the opportunity to revise and update their lessons after
teaching them in the spring.
Local primary sources used in conjunction with American Memory primary sources
are being sorted and placed in separate database along with pertinent
information about the images. These images will be housed at the Mountain Heritage Center as a part of the unit plans and
lesson plans as well as being searchable through the image database.