RE: Teacher Guide Reorganization - Community Feedback Forum - Community Feedback Forum

There has been some discussion about reorganizing the teacher guide to better include the new materials that have been added to GLOBE over the last 5 years (carbon cycle, seasons and biomes, watershed dynamics and FLEXE) as well as to better address how doing GLOBE investigations with students relates to the Earth as System. Attached I have created a PDF with some of my own ideas, but am hoping others will comment and supply their ideas so that the program office and funding agencies know what the GLOBE community wants to see and what will work for them. I have posted this under the website forum, because I think the website will be the best way to communicate the relationship of GLOBE components to one another.

Sarah,

The discussions that I have heard agree with the diagram that you created.

I'd like GLOBE to get some K-12 educators and post-secondary education methods faculty input on changing:

Air, Water, Soil, Land Cover and Seasons <- these are the words we use in workshops now

to

Atmosphere
Hydrosphere
Biosphere
Geosphere

This change makes sense, but I think we need a plan for when/where the spheres are introduced. I don't think we can/should leave the layman language behind. I'm probably not going to advertize a soils workshop as "The Geosphere GLOBE Workshop" because teachers won't have any idea of what it is they are going to experience...but "Soils Workshop" they can identify with. At the workshop I can set the context for soils as a geosphere topic. The same consideration needs to be given to students. Students can self identify themselves as interested in seasons...but will they self identify as interested in Biosphere? And when I am explaining what GLOBE is to my AAUW chapter, I will say that we engage students in learning about their local air, water, soil, land cover and seasons in order to develop a better understanding of earth systems.


I'd like to see a venn diagram with the overlapping activities and protocols.

The El Nino prediction anomaly activity could be another option for introduction activity.

Marcy - Good thoughts, thanks for contributing! I hope others will join us in the conversation.

I wasn't really thinking that the spheres language would entirely replace other more common language, but merely provide a way to better integrate the ESSPs as well as provide a little more context for why high school teachers (and perhaps undergraduate professors) would want to use GLOBE. I think providing the context of where each piece of GLOBE fits into the Earth System really addresses our need in K-16 education to take a more systems-based approach for understanding our world (environmental as well as economic, political, and social systems).

Hi Sarah and Marcy,

Thank you for sharing your ideas and thoughts. These same concepts came up during the Master Trainer Meeting in May which generated a lot of excitement. This reorganization would help the Teacher's Guide, workshops and the Website emphasize more of the Earth system connections within GLOBE - and help teachers and students better understand connections between and among the various investigations, ESSP materials, protocols and learning activities.

While this is a great idea, I'm not sure of a timeline for implementation due to other work currently in development. However, we have it in our "To Do" jar!

Thanks again for sharing your ideas and comments.
Best regards,
Gary