Many Eyes

Many Eyes This site allows you to create various visualizations for various sets of data. Could be an interesting way for students to present their work.

EECOM News ready for download

EECOM News / COM'ERE

Greetings / Bonjour Remy!

Le français suit

EECOM News ISSUE 5 2009

The publication of this EECOM newsletter marks some significant changes in the leadership structure for Canada’s premiere network for environmental educators and communicators. Read on in the Message from the Co-chairs. In the Message from the Executive Director, Natalie Swayze reflects that although we typically celebrate New Year’s in January, the fall has always been an important time of “fresh starts” for many of us, including EECOM. Should environmental educators care about polling results? Why on earth might we want to do some polling ourselves? And anyway, isn’t polling really expensive? In our feature, Progress through Polling: Why we should conduct polling about environmental education, discover good reasons why polling helps us with our work – and a number of ways to make if affordable. In the next in our series profiling the winners of the 2008 Canadian Awards of Excellence in Environmental Education, meet Dan Murphy, who has guided thousands of learners, both students and teachers, to a better understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of what nature’s classroom has on offer.  And in the News, the Call for Submissions is now open for the EECOM 2010 Annual National Conference, Diversity, sustainability and environment: Exploring cultural and practical diversity for environmental learning, May 19-22, Simon Fraser University Download the full Issue - http://www.eecom.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=129&Itemid=38&lang=en COM'ERE Edition 5 2009 La publication de ce bulletin d’EECOM souligne d’importants changements dans la structure à la direction pour le réseau en éducation relative en environnement pour les éducateurs et les communicateurs au Canada. Lisez ce qui suit dans le Message des Co-présidents. Dans le Message de la directrice générale, Natalie Swayze souligne que bien que nous célébrons généralement le nouvel an en janvier, l’automne a toujours été un moment important de « nouveaux départs » pour beaucoup d’entre nous, y compris pour EECOM. Est-ce que les éducateurs en environnement devraient se préoccuper des résultats des scrutins aux élections ? Pourquoi voudrions-nous faire des sondages nous-mêmes? Et de toute façon, les sondages ne sont-ils pas onéreux ? Dans notre dossier, le progrès par le biais du scrutin : pourquoi nous devons effectuer un sondage sur l’éducation relative à l’environnement, découvrir de bonnes raisons pour lesquelles les sondages nous aident dans notre travail et plusieurs manières de les rendre abordables.  Dans la prochaine série sur le profil des gagnants pour le prix d’excellence 2008 en éducation relative à l’environnement, rencontrez Dan Murphy qui a communiqué à des milliers d’apprenants, étudiants et enseignants, une meilleure compréhension, une appréciation et la joie qu’apporte la grande salle de classe du monde naturel. Et dans les nouvelles, les Mises en candidatures sont maintenant commencées pour la conférence nationale annuelle d’EECOM 2010. Diversité, la durabilité et l’environnement : à la découverte de diversités dans les cultures et pratiques dans l’apprentissage de l’environnement, 19-22 mai 2010, Université Simon Fraser Lisez Plus - http://www.eecom.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=129&Itemid=38&lang=fr

Snowbird: the #snowtweets visual explorer

Snowbird: the #snowtweets visual explorer Dear Colleagues: [With apologies for any cross postings.] We have been experimenting with using publicly available web media to engage community participation in measuring snow! And now we need your help, if you are interested. The Snowtweets project is all about encouraging specialists and non- specialists to make simple measurements of snow depth that can we can access through widely available web media. Snowtweets relies on users "tweeting" their snow depth from their local site through the Twitter website. We then pick up the "tweets" in our own data base and pass them through to a visualization package called Snowbird. Snowbird renders the snow depth on a representation of the globe (e.g. Blue Marble). We are seeking to use this information to help with our remote sensing and model estimates (and to provide a modicum of a public service). To participate, you will need to have a Twitter account (free) and start tweeting. To see the data you can download and fire up the Snowbird application. All you need to know about how to do it, and how to get Snowbird, can be found on our website: http://snowcore.uwaterloo.ca/snowbird In the northern hemisphere, snow extent is coming to it's minimum so in general, we do not expect significant numbers of NH tweets, except from the far north. In the S. hemisphere, however, we might be able to get the attention of people experiencing current snow conditions. Please feel free to join in and "tweet". At this time we would like to test out the system so the more the merrier! Our goal is to reach out to long-term participants (universities, schools, research centres, community/professional groups) who have an interest in contributing for professional/academic/educational reasons. The emphasis is on ease of use (Twitter can be accessed through the web including via mobile data devices) to get more people involved. If you have any comments or questions drop me a line! Best regards Richard ----------------------------------------------------- Dr. Richard Kelly Associate Professor Department of Geography & Environmental Management University of Waterloo 200 University Avenue West Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1 Vox. (+1) 519-888-4567 etxn: 35451 email: rejkelly@uwaterloo.ca web: www.environment.uwaterloo.ca/u/rejkelly

EEAY Sharing Meeting, Tuesday Nov 3

Environmental Education Association of the Yukon Sharing Meeting

Tuesday November 3, 2009
Whitehorse Public Library
3:45 - 5:00

for more info call 667-3675

Come meet with other folks involved in environmental learning, 

formal and informal...and find out what's going with EE

in the territory.

Invitiation to teachers: Inquiry to Insight, international project

Let me introduce myself: My name is Géraldine Fauville and I’m the
Swedish coordinator of an international educational project addressing
environmental issues: Inquiry-to-Insight (Project Investigator: David
Epel from Stanford Univeristy and Michael Thorndyke from The royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Let me tell you more about our project:
As the carbon dioxide concentration in the air is increasing, the oceans
are changing: they are getting warmer (global warming) and more acidic
(ocean acidification). These threats are very likely to have substantial
impacts on marine ecosystems and on terrestrial species that depend on
the oceans (e.g. human beings). To prevent the most dramatic
consequences of such changes to the climate, citizens need to take
collective actions. Those issues are international and the only way to
find effective solutions is to promote *collaboration between
countries*. The media and internet release tremendous amount of
information of different quality and accuracy on those issues and thus
people need to have a good *critical thinking ability* in order to sort
out all the information. In that respect, schools have a critical role
to play. In that respect, education is a key factor to increase
awareness and understanding of climate change.

Inquiry-to-Insight -partnership between Stanford University, USA and
Göteborg University, Sweden - develops implements and testes
international students’ collaboration and digital tools addressing
climate change and environmental issues with high schools students
following a Biology/Nature Science class.

The students involved in I2I collaborate with students from another
country through a private social network (used as a social network and a
learning platform) Aside from social networking; I2I provides online
tools on climate change (ocean acidification, carbon footprint) and - in
the near future- on pollution. We also promote interaction between
scientists and students thanks to new technologies.
One such tool that we have developed is an open access virtual animation
and laboratory on ocean acidification
(http://i2i.stanford.edu/carbonlab/co2lab.swf). This tool allows
students to improve their background knowledge of OA and to become
virtual scientists, conducting and analyzing research on the effect of
ocean acidity on a key and well known marine organism: sea urchin. Our
results from a pilot study in two high schools in Sweden and California
indicate that the OA I2I activities in particular and other I2I tools in
general, increase students' awareness and understanding of OA.

Practically, the schools collaborating with us will have:

* the opportunity to get a better understanding of the environmental
issues which will be amongst the most challenging problems in the coming
years
* a rare opportunity to discover a world often misunderstood: Sciences.
Science will not be any longer just laws and formula to study in a book
but a way of thinking and solving problems. This rich experience may
lead some of them to embrace a scientific career.
* a chance to meet a new culture and different ideas. Moreover it is a
real challenge for teenagers to accept and respect someone else’s point
of view- even in family. This exercise of “cross-cultural” communication
will be a useful for them in their “everyday” life.
* for teachers, observing how students react to new technologies. It can
give valuable keys to improve students’ learning interests.

We are looking for English speaking classrooms eager to meet our project
and we believe some High schools from Yukon could be interested in
joining us.

If you want to know more about the project, visit our website:
http://i2i.stanford.edu/index.html or feel free to contact me for any
further information.

Best wishes,

Géraldine
--
*Géraldine Fauville*
Project coordinator WGLN III: Inquiry to Insight
Web: Inquiry-to-Insight <http://i2i.stanford.edu>
The Sven Lovén Centre for Marine Sciences - Kristineberg
S-450 34 Fiskebäckskil
Sweden
Email: geraldine.fauville@loven.gu.se

Phone: ++46 (0) 523 18543
Fax: ++46 (0) 523 18502

River of Words: Contest

River of Words: Contest: "2009 Contest Information Creek Seeker Prize Information Each year, in affiliation with The Library of Congress Center for the Book, River of Words conducts a free international poetry and art contest for youth on the theme of WATERSHEDS. The contest is designed to help youth explore the natural and cultural history of the place they live, and to express, through poetry and art, what they discover. The contest is open to any child in the world, from 5-19 years of age. Older students must have not yet completed high school. There is no charge to enter. (See entry form.)"