Understanding biodiversity and the factors that govern it are important components of an environmental literacy framework. Yet, students rarely graduate from K-12 institutions with a robust understanding of biodiversity, particularly of their local ecosystems. Given the wealth of expertise in biodiversity science within the LTER network and education activities at LTER sites, we have the opportunity to build unique collaborations that continue to enhance ecological literacy.

The use of social networking media, wikis, blogs, and YouTube has skyrocketed, and more and more people are using these tools to keep in touch with family, friends, and those with common interests. While many of these media target the social sphere, they also have uses in communicating science to younger audiences and in conducting citizen science. The purpose of this workshop is to provide a space for the LTER community to share how it has used web-based and social networking media, to identify best practices, and to explore new ways of using these media at LTER sites and as a network.

This poster will describe the instrumentation that was placed at the school, the activities that were presented to students in grades 2-6 and future plans for teacher professional development.

The Education Representatives will meet between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 13, 2009, prior to the official beginning of the All Scientists Meeting. EduReps will share efforts and strategies for both education and outreach. The meeting provides a forum to communicate shared interests and to shape (or re-shape) common goals, inspire and support cross-site projects, and re-focus the Education Committee.

This workshop will introduce Virtual Field Trips version 2. We will explore developing an open access library of on-line, interactive virtual field trips for sites within the LTER Network. Individual field trips include site descriptions with links to data sources and on-line explorer tools, panoramic movies with hotspots linking to visual and audio descriptions of points of interest (teaching points), photo galleries that further describe key site features, and more.

Patterns of phenology for plants and animals control ecosystem processes, determine land surface properties, control biosphere-atmosphere interactions, and affect food production, health, conservation, and recreation. Although phenological data and models have applications related to scientific research, education and outreach, agriculture, tourism and recreation, human health, and natural resource conservation and management, until recently there was no coordinated effort to understand phenology at the national scale.

The goal of the ITEST-funded CoastLines project is to facilitate efficient deployment of geographic information systems (GIS) in schools. It is accomplishing this goal by laying the foundation for sustained implementation of project strategies, materials, and technologies at three sites in the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program.

For the last three years, scientists and educators from five LTER sites (AND, CAP, JRN, LUQ, and SGS) have collaborated on the NSF-funded Teaching Ecological Complexity Through Field Science Inquiry (Ecoplexity) Project. The purpose of the project is to provide resources and training for high school teachers that will allow them to engage in authentic field research studies with their students. Our goal for this working group is to help establish new partnerships with other LTERs seeking to use this model of teacher professional development and these existing web-based resources.

An important mission of the Andrews LTER program is to maintain strong linkages among research, education, and forest management and to provide educational opportunities in the realms of ecosystem science and natural resource management.

Schoolyard LTER (SLTER) allows for the engagement of K-12 teachers and students in science and scientific research through LTER research experiences. How these research experiences are used in SLTER efforts vary from site to site, yet all provide a rich experiences and learning opportunities for educators and their students.