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Located on 59 acres of floodplain in southeast Raleigh, the Walnut Creek Wetlands Center is now open to the public. The Center provides a unique opportunity for visitors to see the plants and animals of a wetland in an urban setting. Low cost programs are available to teach “the importance of wetlands, wildlife habitats, hydrology, natural ecosystems, and human interactions with the natural environment.”

Educators can find more information about the Center in LEARN NC’s Discover NC section. Also check out the field guide, “Walnut Creek: A Guide to Exploring Urban Wetlands” created by Exploris Middle School Students. Over the course of a year, the students investigated the wetlands. Using cameras and waterproof journals, they recorded everything they saw and experienced, from tracks made by raccoons and coyotes to the lowliest leopard slugs and sea lampreys. They presented their work to the city of Raleigh in 2008 to be placed in the new Walnut Creek Wetlands Center. LEARN NC is proud to be able to bring this work to you on our site in PDF format.

North Carolina Maps is a comprehensive, online collection of historic maps of the Tar Heel State. Featuring maps from three of the state’s largest map collections — the North Carolina State Archives, the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the Outer Banks History Center — North Carolina Maps provides an unprecedented level of access to these materials. North Carolina Maps contains more than 2,000 maps, ranging in date from the late 1500s to 2000, and including detailed maps for each of North Carolina’s one hundred counties.

North Carolina Maps’ K-12 section is devoted to helping teachers use the interactive maps included in the database. Included in this section are essays instructing teachers on how to incorporate maps into the classroom, an illustrated history of maps of North Carolina, and dozens of lesson plans using the maps on the site. The lesson plans span all age groups from kindergarten to twelfth grade and every core subject from environmental science to U.S. history. Math teachers can even teach algebra using a map lesson plan!

One of the site’s most popular lesson plans is the eighth-grade lesson “Webquest: Building an Historic District.” In this lesson, students explore the city of Oxford using overlay maps that switch from 1882 to the present day, and they can find where local schools, grocery stores, and movie theaters were located.

Blog post provided by Jennifer Job, Documenting the American South/UNC Libraries

If you missed LEARN NC’s Fall Interactive Conference on October 1, we’ve posted video archives from all the afternoon sessions. Nine sessions in total cover project-based learning; professional development; fun, free tools for the classroom; and more content designed to save you time and help you teach more effectively.

The videos also feature a replay of the ongoing live chat. This online conversation includes supplemental links, resources, and insights from LEARN NC staff members and educators from around North Carolina — and around the country.

All session archives will open in Adobe Connect. For more information about Adobe Connect software, please see the technical requirements section of the “Details for Virtual Participants” page.

LEARN NC Fall Interactive Conference 2009 — Session archives

The most recent post on our blog Special Education: Telling Facts from Fiction takes a look at pacing guides and asks whether they’re effective when dealing with students who have disabilities.

Check out the latest post on our new blog, Special Education: Telling Facts from Fiction, which analyzes the claim that teaching to students’ preferred learning styles will increase academic success.

Teach kids how great the great outdoors can be. Celebrate “Take A Child Outside Week” Thursday, September 24 through Wednesday, September 30. Take a Child Outside Week is a national initiative spearheaded by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences designed to help break down obstacles that keep children from exploring the natural world. The week encourages children and adults to spend time together outdoors.

On the “Take A Child Outside” website, adults are encouraged to pledge to take a child outside during the week and chart their location on a digital map. LEARN NC is featured as one of the partners on the map. The web site also offers a link to interesting outdoor activities, as well as a list of other participating organizations.

“By arming parents, teachers and caregivers with resources on outdoor activities, children will become reconnected with nature and spend more time outdoors,” says Liz Baird, Director of School Programs at the Museum.

Currently, all 50 U.S. states and four foreign countries actively participate in “Take A Child Outside Week.” This initiative attracted 109 partners its first year and now more than 300 organizations participate nationwide including parks, museums, science centers, and many other organizations interested in reconnecting children and nature.

Wildlife educators encourage North Carolina students to take a walk on the wild side. On March 5, 2010,  sixth- through twelfth-grade students may attend free, hands-on wildlife workshops at the North Carolina State Fair’s Kerr Scott Building. Qualified instructors, including area biologists, environmental educators, wildlife professionals, and wildlife enforcement and conservation staff, will be on hand to lead the workshops, which are aligned to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.

Students will be introduced to a variety of wildlife and outdoor skills topics using interactive activities that focus on using the scientific method. The workshops will offer topics such as biological diversity, adaptation, and sustainable conservation practice. Each topic will be presented in the context of real-world issues that affect the everyday lives of North Carolina students and their communities (rural, suburban, & urban). Click here to read a complete list of workshops. Updates related to this special event will be posted as they become available at the Wildlife Youth Day website.

Register

Interested applicants may pre-register online by simply providing contact information, an estimated count of students, and workshop preferences.

Please confirm your interest by Nov 15, 2009 as workshop schedules will be set based on interest returned at that time. Seats will be filled first by those who pre-register. Remaining seats will then offered on a first-come, first-served basis after that date. For more information, please contact Judy Gardner at (919) 552-9449 (evenings).

About this event

Take A Walk on the Wild Side is proudly sponsored as a collaborative effort, led by the Wake County Wildlife Club, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, North Carolina State University, North Carolina State Chapter of the Quality Deer Management Association, North Carolina National Wild Turkey Federation, North Carolina Wildlife Federation, and other community-minded wildlife partners.

Note: The deadline to apply has been extended to Friday, September 11.

LEARN NC and the creators of the Powering a Nation website are looking for an innovative high school science teacher to write lesson plans based on the stories on Powering a Nation.

Overview

A team of 12 journalists at UNC-Chapel Hill received a grant from the Carnegie and Knight foundations to investigate energy issues in the United States for 10 weeks this summer. They used innovative multimedia storytelling to explore energy solutions that will sustain a growing population. This web-based news project, entitled Powering a Nation launched July 31. The content includes nine stories about energy use in the U.S. and how it affects — and is affected by — the American population. We are searching for a high school science teacher to write at least five detailed instructional plans that make innovative and meaningful use of the stories on the website to teach science objectives in the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.

The lesson plans will be published on the LEARN NC website, and the teacher will receive $500 for his or her work.

Job requirements

The curriculum designer will work closely with LEARN NC to determine grade and subject suitability. The lesson plans must meet LEARN NC’s standards for publishing lesson plans.

Timeline

Deadline for proposals: Friday, August 28.
Deadline extended to Friday, September 11.
To start immediately with completion by Friday, November 6.

Expression of interest

After reviewing the content on Powering a Nation, please submit to Emily Jack a one-page proposal detailing your lesson plan ideas. Proposals should include, for each lesson, a brief overview of lesson activities, planned curriculum alignment, and connection to the Powering a Nation material. For more information, contact Laura Ruel.

LEARN NC, in collaboration with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, and with funding by the North Carolina General Assembly, seeks participants for a free, online program to mentor Chinese language teachers in North Carolina. The program is open to teachers who currently or who will teach Mandarin Chinese, either online or face to face.

This initiative is part of a program to increase Chinese language study in North Carolina. The goal of the Chinese Virtual Mentoring program is to facilitate the teaching of Chinese language across the state of North Carolina. Because Virtual Mentoring happens on the web, teachers can participate in this online learning community at any hour, day or night.

Program Description

Participants in Chinese Virtual Mentoring will be a part of an online cohort of Chinese language teachers from across the state for the Fall semester 2009. The program will begin on Monday, August 31, 2009. All participants will benefit from the following design components of this program:

• One-on-one mentoring: The program will be lead by two teachers who have great experience teaching Chinese to American students. Both are experts in Chinese language instruction and have effectively mentored teachers. The mentors will guide teachers through the curriculum, plus tricky areas for new teachers such as classroom management, working with American teenagers, and communicating with others about what happens in their classroom.
• Professional learning community: Teachers will form a professional learning community of instructors teaching the same subject, each sharing his or her successes, challenges, and unique perspective on how to address instructional issues.
• Full curriculum access: Participants in the Chinese Virtual Mentoring program receive access to a fully developed, online Level 1 Chinese language course to use as a year-long course template or as a reference for individual lessons.
• Free: This experience will be available at no cost to licensed North Carolina teachers.
• Teacher Stipend: Participants will receive a stipend for their participation in this program.

Program Requirements

Applicants must meet the following requirements to participate in this program:

• Licensed to teach Chinese in North Carolina
• Less than five years experience teaching Chinese in North Carolina
• Daily, reliable access to the internet
• Daily, reliable access to a computer
• Willingness to collaborate online with Chinese language teachers around the state
• Time to devote three to five hours weekly, spread across the week
• Desire to improve skills for teaching Chinese to American students
• Commitment to participate for the entire semester: September through December 2009

How to apply

Interested applicants should submit the following information as soon as possible to Dr. Bobby Hobgood.

Name:
School System:
School:
Number of Years teaching Chinese in U.S.:
Please list current teaching assignment(s):
Please list current teaching certifications:
Email address (that you check regularly):
Work Phone:
Home Phone:
Home Mailing Address:

Have you ever taken an online course before? If so, please elaborate.

Please state below why you would like to participate in this program. Include in your statement your intent to teach a world language online in North Carolina.

On July 31, a team of twelve journalists at UNC-Chapel Hill launched a fascinating website, Powering a Nation, which investigates energy issues in the United States. The site uses innovative multimedia storytelling to explore themes of energy use at the grassroots level, where real people interact with the systems that bring us food and electricity.

Through short videos, interactive graphics, written text, and slideshows, Powering a Nation features nine stories:

• “The High-Energy Diet,” which explores the implications of the American food system on global carbon emissions
• “Reclaiming Creation,” which investigates the intersection of faith communities and environmental activism
• “Roping the Wind,” a story about Roscoe, Texas, the site of the biggest wind farm on the planet
• “Debating Coal’s Future,” which profiles a town in Ohio as it struggles over whether to approve three new coal-fired power plants
• “Power in Plants,” a story about the push to adopt biofuels as an alternative to fossil-based fuels
• “Down the Lines,” which examines the dangers posed by our aging electrical infrastructure
• “Mining the Mountains,” a story about the debate over mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia
• “Climate Refugees,” which discusses the plight of coastal Inuit communities forced by erosion and flooding to abandon their homes
• “Energy Portraits,” which reports on the daily energy consumption of three families of different ethnicities, ages, and locations in the U.S.

And coming in September, an interactive game will allow visitors to create and store a detailed profile of their energy usage. Opportunities abound for middle-school and high-school teachers to use Powering a Nation, particularly as a way for students to understand how elements of the curriculum connect with some of the most pressing issues of our time.