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R E E N N e w s l e t t e r, S p r i n g 1 9 9
8Environmental Education News
GREEN Educational Initiatives
1996-97
GREEN's mission is to improve education through a global network that promotes watershed sustainability. We are a recognized leader in national and regional efforts to improve education and the environment, involving schools and communities in new and exciting educational experiences. Major GREEN educational initiatives for 1996-97 are outlined below.
Professional Development
GREEN provides the opportunity to learn new methods and approaches to education through our professional development workshops. We create and deliver custom workshops for a wide variety of groups, and have developed a set of needs assessment and workshop planning tools to help local workshop hosts identify goals, objectives and strategies that best fit the needs of participants and make effective use of the time and place of the workshop.
Since 1996 we have offered public workshops with a number of national and local partners. In 1996 we offered six workshops for more than 100 educators; in 1997 we conducted 17 workshops for more than 250 educators on the following topics:
- What's GREEN & WET: An Introduction to Watershed
Education, offered in partnership with the National
Headquarters of Project WET, covers the basics of the GREEN
model for watershed education.
- River of Words: Exploring Watersheds through Poetry, Art
and Ecology, offered in conjunction with the International
Rivers Network, ties science to the arts through an
interdisciplinary view of watershed education.
- Environmental Education for Empowerment: Students Solving Problems in Their Own Neighborhood, based on GREEN's publication Environmental Education for Empowerment: Action Research and Community Problem Solving, explores inquiry-based and action-oriented approaches to watershed education.
There are 25 active GREEN workshop facilitators across the United States and Canada. Each facilitator leads at least two GREEN-sponsored workshops and participates in at least one facilitator enhancement event each year.
Innovation
The Teacher Enhancement in Environmental Education (TEEE) project, funded by the US Department of Education, was carried out in collaboration with TERC of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Elementary educators participating in TEEE developed skills to guide students in self-directed explorations of their environment. Inquiry in Environmental Education: A Handbook for Elementary Teacher Enhancement was developed from the experiences of this three-year project. It is designed for use in facilitating professional development for elementary teachers interested in learning and teaching about the environment.
Through the Seattle Urban Environmental Stewardship Program (funded by EPA Region X), GREEN is fostering environmental action research in an inner city neighborhood setting, in collaboration with the Seattle School District and the Seattle Alliance for Education. The Puget Sound Urban Resources Partnership also supports this project. This program is expected to develop and test a model for urban environmental action research, along the lines of the GREEN approach, in urban Seattle.
The SalmonWeb, jointly supported by the Bullitt Foundation, Paul Allen Forest Protection Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Konsg�ard-Goldman Foundation and Horizons Foundation is a project designed to create, distribute and coordinate a set of tools that support education, communication and ecological science focusing on salmon habitat. With project partners at the University of Washington Department of Fisheries Science and Cedar Films, this initiative will harness and coordinate the efforts of citizen and student groups in the Northwest to create a networked, learning community aimed at preserving and restoring wild salmon habitat throughout the region. The project includes video production, public service announcements, a series of WWW sites linked to the SalmonWeb online database, and dissemination of an innovative data analysis tool called the Index of Biological Integrity.
Leadership
In the spring of 1993, GREEN began a National Science Foundation-funded Teacher Enhancement Program (TEP). The purpose of this grant is to develop curricular materials and interdisciplinary teaching strategies for the GREEN watershed education model, and disseminate them nationally through a comprehensive professional development program.
Major accomplishments of the TEP in 1996-97 include:
- Publication of the Sourcebook for Watershed Education
- GREEN '96, a national conference for watershed educators
held in July 1996 at Ann Arbor, Michigan.
- GREEN National Student Congress, the first of which was held in May 1997 on the Delaware River.
With the Learning Communities for a Sustainable Future in the Willamette Valley initiative, funded by EPA Region X, GREEN has been developing tools and strategies to address sustainability concepts, rounding out community-based environmental studies with focused consideration of economic and social/equity issues. This project took place in the Willamette River Valley of Oregon, and is considered a test-bed for GREEN as we broaden our model to embrace elements of the sustainability concept. Collaborators include the Sherwood and McKenzie school districts, and various government agencies and nongovernmental organizations.
The Bullitt Foundation has supported a variety of GREEN outreach and dissemination activities in the Northwest, from watershed coordinator gatherings, to on-line communication services, to regional outreach and professional development workshops.
In the Grand Traverse Bay Watershed: An Integrated Monitoring and Sustainability Education Initiative, GREEN and the River Watch Network of Vermont provided assistance to the Grand Traverse Bay Watershed Initiative. Supported by the Gund Foundation, GREEN facilitated a process with participants from throughout the Grand Traverse Bay region to help schools, citizen groups and the business community form lasting partnerships, develop a shared vision for the watershed, define the role of a watershed-wide citizen monitoring program in regional sustainable development efforts, and create opportunities for youth and adults to participate in community-based initiatives that contribute to a sustainable watershed.
Educational Technology
With vision and guidance from GREEN's founder Dr. William Stapp and working in collaboration with the LaMotte Company, during 1996-97 GREEN developed the concept for a low-cost water quality monitoring kit. The GREEN Low-Cost Water Monitoring Kit makes the tools of water quality monitoring more accessible and affordable for a greater number of schools and community groups around the world.
Throughout 1996-97 GREEN continued to develop RiverBank with partners at the University of Michigan (with support from the National Science Foundation). Now available, RiverBank 3.0 is an easy-to-use data storage and networking tool designed to be used in conjunction with GREEN's Field Manual for Water Quality Monitoring. It is a standardized tool for collecting and assessing watershed monitoring data, making it possible for users around the world to share data files via email and the World Wide Web.
GREEN is a collaborator with Culver Productions of Nashville, Tennessee on a National Science Foundation project to develop two interactive CD-ROM learning tools for upper middle and lower high school-aged students. The first CD-ROM focuses on Northwest watersheds and issues of salmon habitat; the second summarizes issues facing the Great Lakes ecosystem. Both provide links to local watershed issues and action-taking, and are expected to be complete by July 1998.
In collaboration with the Concord Consortium of Concord, Massachusetts, Knowledge Revolution and University of Michigan School of Education, the Science Learning in Context project (funded by the National Science Foundation) is a multi-year research and development project to create and disseminate technological tools that facilitate authentic student investigations of the local environment.
The purpose of the One Sky, Many Voices project (with support from the National Science Foundation, through the University of Michigan School of Education) is to develop an Internet-based curriculum using CD-ROM and Internet technologies to engage students in real-world inquiry that meets national science guidelines. Using floods as the primary theme, the curriculum encompasses such concepts as the water cycle, watersheds, land use, water use, and more.