Education/Telecon 2012-08-16

ESIP Education Virtual Meeting August 16, 2012
Attendees: Margaret Mooney, Tamara Ledley, Luann Dahlmann, Becky Reid, Bob Downs, Carol Meyer, Erin Robinson, Alan Doyle, Laura Frye-Levine (student fellow)
Agenda:

Recap of the ESIP Summer Meeting in Madison, WI
Discuss the new teacher fellowship
Go over the budget
Map out the future of the Teacher WIKI

1) Becky- Highlights of the summer meeting included watching the teachers play with and explore their new iPads. Especially inspiring was a spontaneous ‘share-a-thon’ where teachers shared their favorite apps.

Margaret was especially pleased with the success of the ‘assignment’ to download the new SatCam app. At one point during the second day, all the teachers went outside to use the app together and had a lot of fun!
Becky is interested in how we might expand this kind of spontaneous sharing to the teacher wiki in ways that can benefit the needs of the teachers as a group. One of the things she’d like to see the new teacher fellows do is spend time on the Wiki, so it’s important that it be constructed in a way that promotes interaction.

2) Becky - The goal of the Teacher Fellowship is to recruit 2 teachers who have attended an ESIP conference in the past. We’d like teachers who would be able to contribute to the direction of a group ESIP wiki and are committed to attending a local conference in their region – either for professional development or to present work themselves. The teacher fellows would then complete the circle by returning to the meeting the following summer to meet the next teacher fellows, thus ensuring some continuity.

Margaret – It’s important to nurture more connections between the teachers and the ESIP community, this could take a number of forms. We have received applications from teachers in: Santa Barbara, Tennessee, New Mexico, and Wisconsin. Thus there is good potential for connection to all groups and conference cohorts thus far. One concern is whether there is enough money to bring the teacher fellows to the next summer meeting.
Tamara – It’s very important that the fellows return to the meeting next summer
Luann – Ideally, teachers would become facilitators for the new summer teacher workshops, enhancing continuity and drawing on their ability to speak one another’s language. It will also be good to have teacher fellows and student fellows interact.
Laura – I agree, I would be very interested in working with the teacher fellows and helping with that continuity. Student fellows could also provide vital links between some of the more esoteric conference material and the on-the-ground needs of educators.

There was a short discussion about timing issues that will arise if we try to include teacher fellows on the monthly conference call. The consensus is that we will have to re-visit this issue once the teacher fellows are chosen. It is possible that we will have to change the time of the call to accommodate the teacher’s schedule.

Becky – We had 9 applications for teacher fellows, coming from all geographic cohorts. One application was a joint venture between two teachers who want to work together. The applications run the gamut of writing style and what the teachers are proposing to do.
Margaret – I have two favorites. I really like the application from Tennessee, particularly because we have no previous connection there. Geographically speaking, New Mexico and Santa Barbara (Becky Reid) are already covered. One of this year’s teachers, Tanya Flores (from NM), won a Funding Friday award. Beth Gorack (?), from Northern Wisconsin, submitted a particularly strong application.

Should the applications for teacher fellow be sent out to the entire education list serv? So far, only Luann, Tamara, Margaret, and Becky have reviewed the applications. There was consensus that the whole list serv should be given the opportunity to review the applications as it would engage the whole committee and create buy-in. Margaret will make the announcement tomorrow, and we may extend the notification deadline accordingly.

3) There will be a few changes to the budget. To keep supporting teachers at the ESIP summer meeting will cost $6000. This includes 2-day registration for 30 teachers and 6 presenters. It may be more accurate to budget $200/teacher and drop the subsidy on presenter registration as these folks are already attending the conference. So the line item for teacher participation will remain $6000, but with the change that we are no longer paying for presenter registration. Last year’s budget included $7000 for presentations at earth science education conferences. This item will need to change. Now we will be offering a stipend for 2 teacher fellows at $1500/each. Travel support (item 5) can support these same teacher fellows.

Tamara – shouldn’t we list stipends as a separate line item?

For the SACNAS conference, we have included $1000 for 2 undergraduate poster awards at $500/each, or 1 graduate student poster award at $1000. We could spend this money for travel support to bring the awardees to the ESIP winter meeting, and they could present their poster there as well. Travel support for this meeting would be about $1000 each. Ideally there would be enough money in the budget to support two student winners, but if there is not enough money, the undergraduate could be invited. This could be a great opportunity for both a graduate or undergraduate student. Perhaps winning the ESIP student award could somehow be tied to becoming an ESIP student fellow?

Becky – It’s tough to say how the two programs would exactly mesh.

Margaret – What about the NAAEE meeting in October? Should this be in the budget?

Tamara – I am attending the NAAEE meeting and giving a climate workshop.

This is line item #7 – “ESIP member presentation at Climate and Energy Workshop” If all three of these meetings could be combined in one lump sum in the budget, perhaps under the heading of “presentation at a climate conference,” it could provide some flexibility for us moving forward. If we do this, we need to make sure to make it clear to the Science Committee that we do have specific meetings in the pipeline – and we can use the current line items as examples.

4)Becky – would like to see expansion and migration of the teacher WIKI. It started out as a PB Wiki (because this is a free program which is relatively easy to use). But the current wiki is not serving its intended purpose because teachers are using it more as a webpage than as a wiki. I would like to see it migrate to Drupal so that we can use it on our own server.

Erin – The wiki started out as an experimental idea with seed money from Funding Friday. It would be ideal to see the wiki operational in an ESIP branded setting. Soon, ESIP will have a single server with Drupal installation. The teacher wiki should migrate to that server. It can maintain its own identity, but the Drupal site will provide more functionality and integration. This will also facilitate the integration of teachers more closely with the rest of ESIP. We would need about $5,000 in the budget to accomplish this website development. It’s possible for us to keep the site where it is, but this will make it more difficult to support its development. If we do migrate the site, the teacher wiki would still be completely under our control.
Becky – It’s important that it remain easy to add content to the site. Right now, I am adding most of the content.
Tamara – It’s important that we use the site to expose, promote, and brand the resources that teachers want. This should include a library of iPad apps and some integration with the Clean Collection.

Other Items:

The Climate Change Education Working Group needs to put together a budget proposal by September 1, so that we can submit it by the 15th.
Emily Therese Cloyd, the Public Participation & Engagement Coordinator at the USGCRP, would like to present at the DC winter meeting. She wants feedback on the National Climate Assessment. *She lives in DC. Does this sort of thing fit within the purview of the Education Committee?