COASTAL EDUCATORS NEWS
November/December 2003
Vol. 19, No. 2
Great Lakes Student Summit
Announcing the 2004 Great Lakes Student Summit - May 13-14, 2004 in Buffalo, NY. For more information about the 2004 Summit, go to: www.greatlakesed.org/2004glss.html
Background information:
The Great Lakes Student Summit (GLSS), which began in 1995, is an environmental
education program for students in Grades 5-10 from throughout the Great Lakes
States and Canada. The program culminates into a 2-day event held in Buffalo,
New York every other year. The diversity of attendance has progressively increased
at each event with a total of over 1,000 students from New York, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ontario, Canada participating in the past four
events During the 2003-2004 school years, it is expected that nearly 250 students
will research and study the Great Lakes, perform field experiments, and participate
in environmental education in their community. In May of 2004, at the 5th Biennial
Great Lakes Student Summit, students will make formal presentations to their
peers and leading Great Lakes scientists from throughout the basin. They will
also partake in educational workshops, and participate in hands-on field trips.
Past GLSS delegates have gone on to travel to Duluth, MN, Windsor, ON and Milwaukee,
WI to attend and present their Statement of Stewardship to the International
Joint Commission's Public Forum on Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Water Quality.
When students return to their schools and communities, they are encouraged to
share their projects and experiences with fellow students, local school boards
and community organizations. Many also become mentors for younger students in
their respective schools who have an interest in attending a future Summit.
A few students have even gone on to professional careers involving Great Lakes
issues.
Volunteer Monitoring Training Materials
Volunteer Monitoring Training Materials prepared by the CSREES Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring National Facilitation Project for two CSREES Regional Meetings are now available on their website: http://www.usawaterquality.org/volunteer/Trainings/
These PowerPoint presentations include:
Please visit this website to learn about the trainings and access the presentations. They do ask that if you use any of this content to please credit them and let them know when and how you've used the information.
Youth Development Handbook
What are the types of environments in which youth thrive? How do we cultivate such environments to promote optimal development and positive behavior in youth? The Youth Development Handbook: Coming of Age in American Communities provides youth and development practitioners access to current theory and research in the field of youth development, including illustrations of good practice, original case studies, and a contextual approach to such topics as youth participation and diversity.
Because youth practitioners typically identify themselves with one or more contexts, such as youth-serving organizations or faith-based organizations, editors Stephen F. Hamilton and Mary Agnes Hamilton have arranged the book so that each chapter explores the application of youth development principles to its context, drawing on current research. Part I of the book is organized around contexts in which adolescents grow up, such as schools, workplaces, families, peer groups, youth-serving organizations, faith-based organizations, recreation groups, juvenile courts, health clinics, neighborhoods, and cyberspace. Part II addresses broader issues such as evaluation, funding, and community-wide initiatives and the concluding chapter identifies themes that cut across contexts, including mentoring, universal vs. targeted approaches, and evidence-based practice.
Features of this volume:
Chapters written expressly for the book by established scholars committed to learning from the field and making research useful to practitioners in everyday life.
Rather than a "how-to" guide, the book is a source of information and ideas for use in planning programs, training practitioners, and understanding the perspectives of partners in community collaborations.
Original case studies provide illustrations of good practice in working with youth to optimize growth and development in varied settings such as the family, school, youth organizations, and workplaces.
Serves as both a useful reference and as a "state of the art" account of youth development as a field.
The Youth Development Handbook is designed for scholars and researchers in applied developmental science as well as practitioners and policy makers who implement youth development initiatives. The book is also recommended for use in graduate courses on youth development in the fields of Psychology, Human Development & Family Studies, and Education. For order information see their website: http://www.sagepub.com/book.aspx?pid=9725
New Publications from Cornell Resource Center
Orienteering Handbook Available -- This new, enlarged edition of Be Expert with Map & Compass includes everything the beginner needs to know about the increasing popularity of "orienteering." It includes information on understanding map symbols; traveling by map alone, by compass alone, or by map and compass together; finding bearings; sketching maps; and traveling in the wilderness. Map study and compass use is a great source for interesting hands-on games, projects and competitions that teach geography, map reading skills, map creation, understanding direction, and relationship of geographical features. For ordering information, please visit www.cce.cornell.edu/store.
Online Activities for Kids: Projects for School, Extra Credit, or Just Plain Fun -- A new easy-to-use, step-by-step guide is bursting with imaginative projects and now available through the Cornell Resource Center. You can take a virtual trip into the eye of a hurricane, learn magic as you master mathematics, and search for real-life aliens. This will help kids build research skills, gain technical computer knowledge, and learn about specialized computer software as they navigate through six academically organized sections: Science, Math, Social Studies, Language Arts, Geography and Travel, and Arts and Music. For ordering information, please visit www.cce.cornell.edu/store.
Animal Tracks Publications Available -- "Scats and Tracks of the Northeast: A Field Guide to the Signs of Seventy Wildlife Species" will help you determine which mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians have passed your way on a trail or in the woods and could still be nearby. Clearly written descriptions supplemented with hundreds of illustrations of scats, tracks, and gait patterns will help you recognize seventy Northeastern species. "Animal Tracks: An Introduction to the Tracks and Signs of Familiar North American Species" is a full-color, laminated, fold-out, pocket guide, and is a must-have reference for beginners and experts alike. You'll find 54 common mammal tracks and 18 common bird tracks organized by the easiest recognizable trait, the number of toes on the animals foot. For ordering information, please visit www.cce.cornell.edu/store.
The Cutting Edge
The University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences is pleased to present The Cutting Edge - a series of five Saturday morning seminars where top UB professors will give presentations aimed at increasing public awareness in rapidly advancing fields. The series is designed for high school students but is also open and of interest to the general public.
High school students who attend at least three of the five lectures will receive souvenir gifts and an "Honorary Scholar" certificate.
Registration and light refreshments at 9:30 am. Lectures begin at 10:00 am and will take place in the Center For The Arts, on UB's north campus. Seminar presentations include:
Lectures and parking are free. For more information, call 645-2711 or visit
their website at www.cas.buffalo.edu/outreach/cutting-edge
Species that Endanger Species
Some introductions can lead to trouble, especially when the newcomers wipe out the natives.
You might not have heard about the small Indian mongoose, the cane toad or the Brazilian pepper. But these species have caused the extinctions of many others.
Daniel Simberloff is a biologist at the University of Tennessee. He says introduced plants and animals -- those brought to new places by people -- are one of the greatest threats to endangered species, second only to habitat loss.
Simberloff says non-native plants and animals can do extreme damage after their introduction into a new environment. A prime example is the small Indian mongoose, brought to a number of islands, including Hawaii, to control rats in sugarcane fields.
"It's not done a very good job of controlling rats, but it's attacked many birds, mammals and reptiles and some amphibians. And, it's actually caused the global extinction of at least thirty species and subspecies of vertebrates in various places."
Simberloff says the U.S. Endangered Species Act is the best law in the world to provide for the rehabilitation of threatened plants and animals. But he says it does not keep potentially harmful species from being introduced in the first place.
"The Endangered Species Act has been used in rehabilitation plans to have a component of the plan be to attempt to eradicate or at least lessen the populations of some introduced species that are causing the problem, but it's not been used to keep out species."
Simberloff says the federal government needs to tighten its regulation of imported plants and animals to protect native species.
Credit: Earthwatch Radio on the web at http://ewradio.org
Coastal Educators News, edited by H. David Greene, Extension Educator, is published five times a year by New York Sea Grant located at 229 Jarvis Hall, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260 (Email sgbuffal@cornell.edu). Our newsletter is located on our website at www.nysgeducation.org or copies can be mailed upon request.