Ernst Community Classroom located @ 1580 Scott Lake Rd in Waterford, MI 48328

Ernst Community Classroom located @ 1580 Scott Lake Rd in Waterford, MI 48328

Friday, December 30, 2011

WINT Nature Center (Update)


Lewis E. Wint Nature Center in Independence Township offers activities year-round


Named one of the Top 10 Nature Centers in Southeast Michigan by Metroparent Magazine, the  Lewis E. Wint Nature Center offers year-round educational programs to engage and entertain children and adults alike.

The Lewis E. Wint Nature Center is located on the grounds of Independence Oaks County Park at 9501 Sashabaw Road in Clarkston.

With activities like crafting, hiking, star-gazing, geocaching, cross-country skiing and ice-skating the nature center and park offer a variety of activities for everyone in the family to enjoy, every season of the year.



The Lewis E. Wint Nature Center is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. 

It is closed on Mondays and select holidays. 

However, Independence Oaks County Park is open approximately 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset, every day of the year except Christmas, or as posted at the park entrance.

For more information contact Wint Nature Center at 248-625-6473; Independence Oaks County Park at 248 625-0877, or visit the Oakland County Parks and Recreation website.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Something Old, is New Again!


Frank Lloyd Wright: An Eco Visionary Before Green Became The Rage

An exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum tries to bill Wright's "organic architecture” as a predecessor to the environmentally minded design of today.
One imagines that Frank Lloyd Wright, America’s most famous architect, would’ve laughed mightily at the suggestion that he is linked to the environmentally minded architects who litter the profession nowadays. They’re just so earnest the way they like to talk about their green roofs and their fancy solar panels and their taste for group work and collaboration. Whereas FLW liked to... well,he liked to do other things.
Yet, as a new exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum tries to show, Wright’s signature “organic architecture” was a powerful predecessor to today’s sustainable-design movement. You see it in everything from Fallingwater in Pennsylvania to Taliesin West in Arizona and many of the lesser-known projects in between: “Wright’s concerns with materials, efficient use of space, sustainable manufacturing, attention to local environment and use of natural light mirror those of contemporary architects worldwide,” James Ballinger, director of the Phoenix Art Museum, says. “This exhibition provides an exciting forum for which Wright’s work can be re-examined and applied to concerns of the day.”
That seems to ring particularly true in Arizona, where Wright designed more than a dozen buildings. But looking out over the state's mind-numbing landscape of highways and tract houses, you wish architects drew on his ideas a little more.
Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Centuryruns through April 29. More info here.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

GREEN Partners in Highland Park Announce Groundbreaking Project Launch! (Update)


Groundbreaking set for farming, energy center in Highland Park
By Melanie D. Scott Free Press Staff Writer
   Highland Park Community High School students will have a chance to experience urban farming and learn about solar energy as early as next spring, thanks to a new Green Economy Leadership Center being built on the school’s campus.
   At 12:30 p.m. today, district officials, parents and students will gather at the high school on Woodward to break ground on the center, which is expected to be completed in February.
   The center will be housed in a large greenhouse and will include an urban agriculture training center, a passive solar hoop house, raised beds, a solar photovoltaic lab and an outdoor classroom that will catch rainwater.
   “The greenhouse concept was Superintendent Dr. (Arthur) Carter’s dream, but I picked it up,” said current Superintendent Edith Hightower. “Ideally this will give the students an alternative instruction environment and a hands-on experience.”
   The district and Distributed Power, a sustainable development company, are working together to create the program. The center will be built with a $100,000 grant.
   “Nothing like this has been built,” said Scott Meloeny, founder of Distributed Power. “We will have a solar lab where students will learn how to create energy from the sun. They will learn to reuse resources.”
   Meloeny also said students will maintain a perennial orchard with apples, pears, raspberries and cherries. Fruits, vegetables and herbs grown in the garden will go to support a special in-school cafĂ©, where students create their own menu 
based on the items harvested.
   It will give a new meaning to Made in Michigan,” Hightower said.
   Once the program is operational, Hightower said she would aim to establish similar models at the district’s two schools that serve kindergarteners through eighth-graders.
   In prepping kids for the 21st Century, this is an opportunity to look beyond high school,” Hightower said. “This is a premier education center that will teach them they now have options that are limitless in this economy.”


Thursday, December 15, 2011

The Distribution of Empathy and Power



Jeremy Rifkin and Diane Rehm discuss what is coming our way during this, though I'm not sure I would call it "industrial," revolution. How will we learn along with our students, how to creatively apply these miraculous possibilities?
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-09-27/jeremy-rifkin-third-industrial-revolution

Happy Holidays! (From the Gift that Just Keeps on Giving)

Dear Jim, 

As we round out a busy and successful 2011, we're excited at the prospect of new projects and powerful partnerships in 2012.  

This past year, P21 has built up a strong DC presence, developed new tools & resources such as the P21 Common Core Toolkit, concluded a series of successful events, webinars, and helped introduce bipartisan 21st Century Readiness legislation in both chambers of Congress.  We also reconvened our PDAP friends and affiliates to develop better and stronger resources for the new year. 

We look forward to engaging in substantive face-to-face as well as online conversations with the broader P21 community in 2012.  We will tackle such topics as  21st century citizenship, implementation of 21st century assessments, and galvanizing thebeyond school community to rethink the structure of school as we know it to help our students be better prepared for college, career and citizenship.

We urge you to share with us your stories of 21st century learning, take advantage of theP21 Speaker Bureau, and stay tuned for many exciting projects in 2012.  Thank you for all the great work you do on behalf of 21st century students in your districts. 

With wishes for a warm and wonderful holiday season, 

All the best,
 
Tim Magner
Executive Director,
Partnership for 21st Century Skills

P21 Logo Horiz Color 
1 Massachusetts Ave NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001 

Monday, December 12, 2011

Farming, Trending Now :-)

Model the Practice


National Park Service Expanding Reach Into STEM

Sixth graders from Terman Middle School meet with their instructor at the beginning of the day during a weeklong residential field-science program run by NatureBridge.
—Ramin Rahimian for Education Week

Agency plans to reach a fourth of U.S. students


Dense fog is slow to abate on this recent morning, as more than 200 6th graders scatter into small groups on the site of an old military camp in California's Marin Headlands outside San Francisco. They are a mix of moods—eager, hesitant, hyperactive, and sleepy—as they begin their first full day at NatureBridge, a residential environmental field-science program in partnership with the National Park Service.
The program, in its 40th year, has served close to 1 million children from all over the country at four national parks on the West Coast: Yosemite, Olympic, Golden Gate, and the Santa Monica Mountains. This coming spring, the program will expand to the East Coast, with the help of a $4 million grant from Google Inc., to set up camp in the Prince William National Park, about 40 minutes outside the nation's capital.
NatureBridge's continued efforts to engage children in science at some of the country's most beautiful sites comes alongside a national push to improve the quality of STEM—or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—instruction, in light of U.S. students' lackluster test performance compared with many of their international peers'. In the most recent round of the federal Race to the Top competition, for instance, the seven finalist states are required to highlight how the plans submitted in their original proposals will improve and enhance the quality of STEM education in their schools.
The increased attention to STEM has focused in part on how to improve student interest in learning about these subjects and pursuing careers in the fields later on. Hands-on learning experiences, like those NatureBridge and the National Park Service use, are seen by some as one solution. Yet in a time of tight resources and high-stakes testing in education, such programs also face a challenge in vying for funding and proving their legitimacy.
Terman Middle School 6th graders Nicole Nemychenkov, left, and Andy Pan examine insects found in pond water at NatureBridge in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. For more than 40 years, NatureBridge has instructed students in field science and environmental education in Yosemite, Olympic, Golden Gate, and Santa Monica Mountains national parks.
—Ramin Rahimian for Education Week
"To improve environmental literacy and attract more kids to explore STEM careers, we as a society need to shift attitudes and expand the knowledge of young people through broader and more engaging programs that teach kids about key issues," said NatureBridge Executive Vice President Jason Morris. "This work is never going to be scaled by NatureBridge alone offering environmental education programs in all places. But we can demonstrate the viability of these types of programs and ensure we maintain cutting-edge and relevant programs that embrace and evolve with the changes in the field."

Unaware of Learning

A group of 16 of the 6th graders breaks off with NatureBridge instructor Pete Demyanovich, who will guide them through the week. Each campus, while geographically distinct, follows NatureBridge's core education framework for inquiry-based science: developing students' sense of environmental awareness, connections to the natural world, and stewardship for the places they live in.
But each session, for each school, is different, tailored to the age, the grade, and the goals of the particular school.
For Terman Middle School, a public school in Palo Alto, Calif., the goal this week is not merely to improve students' understanding of earth science, but also to develop and build a more cohesive 6th grade in the 660-student school. Prior to arrival at NatureBridge, teachers spent hours setting up small groups that transverse social circles, socioeconomic classes, and ethnic boundaries. Throughout the day, activities focus on connecting these students with one another, many who had not met prior to this week.
After a few rounds of icebreakers and a lesson on plate tectonics, Mr. Demyanovich's group creates interactive skits to illustrate the scientific principles just learned. Later, the students figure out how to cross an imaginary pool of lava in a team-building activity. At lunchtime, they sit in a circle to make sandwiches, ensuring "no trace" of trash, or even crumbs, is left behind. In the afternoon, group members pair off to collect water samples and organisms from a nearby pond for a lab activity later in the day.
According to Mr. Demyanovich, a former classroom teacher, one of the features that sets the program apart from classroom learning is that the children are engaged and learning science without being aware they're learning. Even the "quiet kids" come out of their shells and participate, he said, the classroom hierarchies and politics erased.
Hands-on science education is fundamental to improving "geo-literacy," or understanding the connections between actions and impact in the ecosystem, said Daniel Edelson, the vice president of education for the National Geographic Society, which has helped support NatureBridge through evaluation, advice, and funding through its foundation. Students have to learn through real experiences, he said, not just textbook learning.
Students write about their observations in field journals after viewing insects under microscopes during an afternoon in the lab on the NatureBridge campus in Sausalito.
—Ramin Rahimian for Education Week
"In creating schools that are optimized for academic learning, we've created environments that interfere with learning about the natural world," said Mr. Edelson, who was also a member of the education advisory council that helped NatureBridge devise its core education framework. "We need to create opportunities for students to learn about the environment through firsthand experiences. This means getting them out of school buildings in order to observe and experience the natural world."

Making Connections

As interest in STEM education rises nationally, there seems to be a particular focus on science. Efforts are under way to develop common standards in the subject. (All but four states have already adopted the common-core state standards in mathematics .) But there's not only heightening attention to science learning itself, but to instruction that builds students' understanding of the connections between science and the environment.
The U.S. Department of Education this fall announced it would recognize exemplary schools that actively promote environmentally friendly practices and encourage students' environmental literacy through the new Green Ribbon Schools program. A group of environmental education experts also plans to release a framework next year to guide assessments of students' environmental literacy, and by 2015, the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, will even include an optional exam on the subject.
The National Park Service and its partner providers may be leaders in promoting that literacy. A memorandum of understanding is currently in the works between the Education Department and the U.S. Department of the Interior, which manages the National Park Service, to collaborate on education goals around teacher development and STEM, among other subjects, using outdoor classrooms and spaces.
That comes on the heels of the Park Service's release of a five-year strategic plan, which will guide the agency to its 100-year anniversary in 2016 and into the next century. The plan relies on no additional public funding, but instead, focuses on improving services and program quality and refocusing target audiences.

Expanding Access

A major component of the plan is to expand education programs for a quarter of America's schoolchildren through real and virtual field trips, teacher professional development, and more partnerships with organizations like NatureBridge to provide programs at their 394 parks or similar sites. Park Service leaders hope to supply free transportation to nearly 100,000 students annually and leverage digital learning and social media as a way to reach more children.
That means children in New York City, for example, could use Skype to virtually explore the kelp forests in Southern California's Channel Islands or see the ins and outs of a historic Nebraska homestead, said Julia Washburn, the Park Service's associate director for interpretation and education. Lesson plans for teachers to use in conjunction with parks and historic sites, large and small, are also being expanded for the Park Service's website. The aim is to provide access to the parks for students who may not be able to participate in programs like NatureBridge because of limited access to locations or funding.
Andrea Garcia-Milla, a 6th grader at Terman Middle School, brings back a water sample from a pond during a week at NatureBridge in Sausalito, Calif. The National Park Service is expanding its education programming.
—Ramin Rahimian for Education Week
"The benefits of multiday, residential, outdoor education programs are very well documented and well embraced, but they are expensive to provide and require a lot of resources," Ms. Washburn said. "This means they are typically a deeper experience for fewer kids. Shorter single-day, field-trip experiences are less expensive, and can serve more students, but their impact, while still beneficial, isn't as great."
Late in the afternoon, students take their pond samples to the microscope lab to look for and identify insects, which they sketch in their NatureBridge field journals. For a number of students, it's their first time using microscopes. A typical science class back at school, a few casually mention, is reading assigned paragraphs out of a textbook.
Despite the growing attention to STEM, in many places, the quality of science instruction has been found lacking.
A recent report from WestEd, a San Francisco-based research organization, found that 40 percent of California elementary teachers surveyed said they devote 60 minutes a week or less to science. The quality of science instruction in most schools was subpar, the report found, mainly because of poor instructional materials, ill-equipped teachers, and a lack of assessments—factors attributed in part to budgetary pressures and deemed to be common nationwide.
Given today's fiscal realities, justifying the importance of programs like NatureBridge could get more difficult. The Park Service, for one, faced its first federal cuts in years and may have to reduce programs in the future. NatureBridge, which operates as a nonprofit, currently provides funding to more than a third of participants. Many schools do their own fundraising to pay for the program, including Terman Middle, which raised $6,000 through the local PTA to pay for the students' attendance.
Although participation hasn't declined, demand for assistance has heightened, according to NatureBridge. Private grants, thus far, have enabled the program to meet the need. The program has also continued to make a greater effort to reach out to students from underprivileged and diverse backgrounds to expose them to national parks and field science.
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For students who live in highly urban areas, and whose families are not able or inclined to visit these types of spaces, it can be challenging to make hands-on environmental science experiences relevant, educators say.
"The question is: How do you take an education experience that may seem far removed and help make connections with everyday life? How can we better ensure the environment is not separated from day-to-day life and make an impact on environmental literacy and stewardship in the short and long term? " said Nicole Ardoin, an assistant professor of environmental education and social ecology at Stanford University.

Taking It With You

A team of Stanford researchers led by Ms. Ardoin hopes to uncover those answers. Last month, the Moore Foundation, based in Palo Alto, awarded grants to both NatureBridge and her team to perform a comprehensive multiyear evaluation of NatureBridge's field-science efforts and to develop measurements to assess environmental literacy and stewardship outcomes of programs like it. They hope the research will reveal some of the nonacademic impacts of those types of experiences, she said, as well as build on ongoing evaluations of the program by Stanford and others that assess the impacts of inquiry-based science and long-term effects on teachers and students.
For some, the NatureBridge experence resonates long after the program. Alumni Virginia Delgado participated in the program as a 6th grader, later served as a high school counselor, and now, as a college student, is pursuing a degree in environmental studies with plans to work one day in environmental law. She said she hopes to work to ensure that all children, regardless of background, have access to experiences like NatureBridge.
Or take Chris Raisbeck, who attended the Yosemite program as a high school student, brought his students to the campuses as a teacher, and now serves as NatureBridge's field-science operations manager. He said the program he first visited more than 30 years ago has maintained the core education mission that drew him to it as a 16-year-old and persuaded him to come back to work for it as an adult.
For these Terman Middle School students, right now they're only thinking about the moment. The sun comes out less than an hour before dusk. The adjacent beach, enshrouded in fog for most of the day, is suddenly visible. Last night, students ventured to the shore to watch a special type of plankton glow in the dark. Tomorrow, Mr. Demyanovich's group heads on a hike to scope out local bird life and make connections to the insects they found today.
"It's really important this experience is not a bubble," Mr. Demyanovich said. "We focus on thematic teaching, teaching that unites the day. We are all educators [at NatureBridge] and are upping the bar to be thought of as a school. We're not just a place to take a field trip to."

Saturday, December 10, 2011

BROADBAND Access a Good Idea!


Oakland Co. roundtable hopes region copies cooperative plan
By Kathleen Gray Free Press Staff Writer
   A one-stop-shop for county investment, Chinese language classes in Oakland County school districts, and a recently signed bill that allows private businesses to pay for infrastructure projects and get repaid by the government — all evolved from Oakland County Business Roundtable recommendations adopted by the county.
   And this year, the roundtable members told Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson on Friday, they hope their kind of open relationship between 
business and government can be adapted on a regional basis.
   The roundtable was created in 1993 by Patter-son, who wanted to gather businesspeople in the county to provide suggestions on 
practices that could be translated from the corporate world to county government. More than 150 businesses have participated over the years.
   The recommendations have ranged from offering support for a second bridge across the 
Detroit River connecting Windsor and Detroit; to creating the one-stop-shop at the county, which provides a single office for people interested in getting information about investing in Oakland County.
   In all, Patterson has adopted 88% of the suggestions the roundtable has offered in the past 19 years.
   At the annual roundtable breakfast Friday, committee member James Clarke, president of Robertson Brothers, a Bloomfield Hills home building company, recommended encouraging the county to help establish a region-wide business roundtable, citing similar 
groups in west Michigan.
   He also said a wise economic development tool for the county would be to create a single site of information on what broadband services are available throughout the county. It’s something the county has been contemplating.
   We should be treating broadband accessibility like electricity,” said deputy county executive Phil Bertolini. “We believe that would be a good economic development tool. It’s going to take some work, but that is something definitely worth trying.”
   ! CONTACT KATHLEEN GRAY: 313-223-4407 OR KGRAY99@FREEPRESS.COM 
L. Brooks Patterson

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Variation on a Theme (Tinkerer's Studio Barn)



Tinkering School

by Jesse Moyer on December 5, 2011
I used to watch TED Talks all the time.  Unfortunately, I have recently fallen out of that practice but I am across one that I just had to share.  Below is a video about The Tinkering School.  The concept behind the school maps directly to the Maker Economy driver of change.  The school allows children to “figure things out by fooling around.”
The Tinkering School provides learners with an authentic learning experience that allows them to celebrate, analyze, and learn from their failures through collaboration, building, and play.  Are there other examples of learning environments that provide the same experiences?

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Future Farmers Informs Our Understanding (New York Times)


November 11, 2011

Future Farmers Look Ahead

INDIANAPOLIS — Gamaliel Rizzo grew up in a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn and is studying to become a doctor. Still, he spent his high school years learning how to raise chinchillas, goats and alpaca and growing radishes, sunflowers and cilantro. He even worked on a dairy farm in the summer, all as a member of the Future Farmers of America.
Although the nation has shifted ever further from its agrarian roots, the organization is thriving. Begun 83 years ago and now known simply as the F.F.A., it is the largest vocational student group in the country, with more than half a million members and still growing.
Although farm employment accounts for less than 1 percent of all jobs in the United States, the Agriculture Department says that one in 12 jobs is agriculture-related. And during the deep downturn and rocky recovery, these workers have actually fared better than most.
That gives the F.F.A. a calling card as an organization that actually prepares students for viable careers. About 70 percent of its members live in rural areas, and 19 percent live in small towns. The fastest growing segment, however, is in urban and suburban areas, now making up 10 percent of the membership.
“You would think that something called Future Farmers of America would have come to a screeching halt by at least the 1960s in most parts of the country,” said Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, a historian at Iowa State University. “What amazes me is the degree to which they have made themselves relevant when by all expectations they should have simply ceased to exist.”
The group has succeeded in part by expanding well beyond agricultural science while also broadening that field to include genetics, logistics, landscape gardening and alternative fuels.
Now, the group’s chapters aim to teach students leadership and job readiness as much as the finer points of cattle care or corn fertilization. Mr. Rizzo said that although he learned about farm life, he spent more time honing skills like public speaking and developing business budgets, which he believes will improve his job prospects someday.
“A lot of these sales tactics will help,” said Mr. Rizzo, 18, who graduated from the John Bowne High School in Queens last summer and is now a freshman at Rutgers.
“Medicine is more of a business,” he added. “And to get patients in this economy you have to understand the market and how it works.”
Last month, he joined about 45,000 teenagers clad in blue corduroy jackets with yellow stitching for the F.F.A.’s annual convention here. Between panel discussions like “Learning to Lead,” “Banking Tips for Students,” and “How Many Lawyers Does It Take?” they competed in events to identify cuts of meat and species of plants, along with contests of extemporaneous speaking and presenting business marketing plans.
At a time when many employers complain about the lack of basic communication and interpersonal skills among job candidates, the F.F.A. emphasizes work on group projects and old-fashioned presentations in essays and speeches at many of its events. Even in the purely agricultural contests like the judging of livestock, students defended their positions before the judges as if they were trial lawyers in court.
“The common misconception is that we are trying to teach our kids to be farmers and rooting, tooting cowboys,” said Greg Rystad, an agricultural teacher and F.F.A. faculty adviser from El Paso, Tex., who had stopped by the booth of the biotechnology firm Syngenta to observe a biochemist testing corn leaves for proteins that would repel worms. “We are training professionals, even if they are not in the agriculture field.”
In one of the large exhibit halls, representatives of Toyota, CSX and Carhartt, the maker of work wear, mingled at a career fair with those of more obvious agricultural services companies like John Deere and the animal health division of Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant.
At times, the convention simply reflected typical teenage interests and concerns. A laser show and pounding rock music accompanied the opening ceremony, as well as a music video produced to the convention’s theme, “I Believe.” A speaker who described himself as a “farm boy from Kansas” warned against drugs, displaying the third- and fourth-degree burns he had incurred during a methamphetamine lab accident. And at the career fair, many students were more interested in playing video games, singing with karaoke machines, taking goofy photos and winning prizes than talking to recruiters.
Still, the organization is a bit of a throwback that stresses wholesome values. Most of the conventioneers were neatly groomed, shunning wild hairstyles or flashy jewelry, and there were frequent invocations of God and country.
Some of the business-oriented projects seemed a bit out of sync with the times. During the finals of the contest for best marketing plan, a team from Shoshoni, Wyo., described an advertising campaign for a small firm using direct mail and road signs, but made no mention of Facebook, Twitter or other social media. A judge pointedly asked why they had budgeted $1,200 just for radio time.
F.F.A. members must enroll in agricultural courses at school, but they do much of their work after school preparing for speaking and business competitions, or tending vegetable plots or animals. They also take apprenticeships on farms, in nurseries and at biotechnology firms. The group draws many students whose parents and grandparents were members, even if they are no longer on the farm. Kaylen Baker, a 17-year-old from Yukon, a suburb of Oklahoma City, said she joined F.F.A., as her father did, and likewise raised pigs. But she had come to the convention as a finalist in prepared public speaking, which she won with a speech on the virtues of miniature cows. She hopes to pursue a career in veterinary medicine.
Part of the group’s appeal may be that the expanded field of agriculture, which includes forestry and fishing, added jobs between 2008 and 2011, a period when total employment in the United States fell about 3.5 percent, according to the Labor Department.
“There is an unlimited future in agriculture,” said Tom Vilsack, the United States secretary of agriculture, citing the demand being created by a growing global population and changing diets in developing countries. Plenty of the children of farmers who have joined the group realize that farming itself may no longer support a family. Thor Pearson, who grew up on the cattle ranch started by his great-great-grandfather in Stanwood, Wash., said his father had turned it into a “hobby farm,” and now worked at a technology firm.
Mr. Pearson, 17, raised 50 head of cattle and competed at livestock judging and agricultural sales in F.F.A., but he said his career ambitions were elsewhere, perhaps in sales.
Whether a bit of denial or confidence was at work, Mr. Pearson said he was unworried about his economic prospects. “You can get pretty far with a good attitude and a good work ethic,” he said as he took a break to listen to a fellow member sing on a talent stage in the convention center atrium. “No matter what the economy is, that is still going to prevail."