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Ecology education webinar

April 27 and May 4

Scaling science to the continent

“The role of species-environmental matching models in conservation.”

The Ecological Society of America is pleased to present a FREE opportunity for professional development this spring! Join us for a two-part webinar series led by Dr. Tom Stohlgren to learn how you can actively engage your students with real data by modeling species distributions. The two sessions will introduce participants to both the research context of the models and their potential for use as teaching tools. This webinar series is part of a partnership between ESA, the Science and Engineering Alliance (SEA), and NEON Inc. with support from the National Science Foundation.

ESA is offering an all-day Sunday workshop at the 2009 ESA Annual Meeting to help prepare the ecology education community for the use of National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) data in undergraduate classrooms. This workshop is a continuation of the effort begun with last year’s NSF-funded faculty development workshop in Washington DC. Similar to last year’s workshop, faculty will explore classroom uses of existing continental-scale data, focusing on datasets currently available.

Workshop registration is $25 and includes lunch and a preparatory webinar on July 8th. The workshop will focus on guided discussion of how participants can use the data in classroom exercises to address four key ecological challenges (biodiversity, biogeochemistry, climate change, and ecohydrology). Preceding the August Workshop, there will be an introductory webinar on Wednesday, July 8 (2-4 PM EST) and a data exploration “homework” assignment which participants will share and discuss in Albuquerque.

For more information, visit the overview page for this workshop.

ESA Press Release

September 24, 2008

Overview

This fall, the Ecological Society of America will offer an exciting new opportunity for undergraduate educators to explore approaches to teaching using large volumes of data on a continental-scale. This pilot workshop is part of ESA’s proposal to introduce the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to the education community in two phases. In Phase 1, data on land use change and climate change will be made available to faculty for discussion and analysis. Undergraduate educators will receive guidance on student-active methods that will stimulate student participation in the scientific process, using real data, even in situations where fieldwork is not feasible. Phase 2 will focus on undergraduate students. We plan to engage the faculty participating in Phase 1 as mentors to undergraduate students as they develop (a) ideas for student research projects on a continental scale and (b) ways in which undergraduate students can collaborate to advance these research projects and generate new research ideas.

NEON