WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE

WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE






Dow Corning Foundation CoreKids Project Proposal

WMU-CoreKids Earth Science Outreach Program


WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE
WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE



CoreKids K-12 Earth Science Outreach Program:



Sharing WMU-MGRRE’s Earth Science Resources with Michigan Communities


Concept Paper; Fall 2010 Update


WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE
WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE WMUCOREKIDS EARTH SCIENCE OUTREACH PROGRAM COREKIDS K12 EARTH SCIENCE

Lifelong scientific literacy begins with attitudes and values established in the earliest years.” -- National Research Council, 1994

The Need

Knowledge about the nature and practice of science as well as an understanding of major unifying concepts in science is essential for every American who hopes to understand many of the global issues we currently face and will face in the future. Earth science knowledge is especially critical because “our lives and our civilization depend on how we locate and manage our planet’s resources” (AGI, 2006). Adult science literacy and a well-trained scientific workforce are critical to the United States’ position as a global leader.


Unfortunately, the majority of geoscientists in the current workforce are within fifteen years of retirement age. The American Geological Institute (AGI) released a report in 2009 which demonstrates that it is estimated that the demand for geoscientists will rise by 22% by 2030, that few new geoscientists are being trained to fill the future pipeline, that many university geosciences departments are threatened due to declining enrollment and, to make matters worse, that Earth science is not a required course in most high schools in the United States (Status of the Geoscience Workforce; http://www.agiweb.org/workforce/reports.html).

Improvements in science education for students of all ages are widely called for and recent research clarifies the benefits to students, teachers and scientists of partnerships between scientists, K-12 students and educators. Research also documents the power of informal learning experiences to spark curiosity and engage interest in the sciences, as well as to result in academic gains for students. The time to engage young students’ natural curiosity about their environment and attract them to high school and college Earth science classes is during the K-12 years.


In short, our nation’s health, security and economic well-being depend largely upon trained geosciences professionals and a scientifically literate population, and CoreKids’ mission addresses both of these critical needs.


What is CoreKids?

When Western Michigan University Geoscience Department’s Michigan Geological Repository for Research and Education (MGRRE) was established in 2006 with funds from the Department of Energy, scientists at the facility made education a priority and called for the development of a K-12 outreach program.


The resulting program, now called CoreKids and supported by grants from corporate Foundations, has two staff members (one full-time and one part-time) and numerous student and faculty volunteers. The program utilizes the unique geological resources of the MGRRE facility to bring real Earth science to K-12 students. CoreKids’ fundamental mission is to increase awareness and understanding of Earth, its processes and its natural resources, and a basic tenet is to provide programming to schools and non-profit organizations without charge.


Visits to classrooms by CoreKids staff and WMU scientists, coupled with school field trips to MGRRE, have enriched the classroom Earth science experience of over 5000 southwestern Michigan K-12 students during the past 3 school years, many of them from at-risk populations. CoreKids has also exhibited at community events such as school district-wide science fairs and the Kalamazoo Gem and Mineral Show, and during the summer of 2010 took part in a program for at-risk students of all ages through Kalamazoo Communities in Schools. CoreKids staff has interacted with hundreds of classroom teachers from across the state of Michigan by presenting workshops and exhibits at meetings of the Michigan Earth Science Teachers’ Association, the Michigan Science Teachers’ Association, and the regional meeting of the National Science Teachers’ Association/National Earth Science Teachers’ Association, among others. The CoreKids website (www.wmich.edu/corekids), launched in late 2008, makes many of our unique resources available to teachers and students outside SW Michigan. An initiative to make subsurface data, photographs of corresponding rock core and scientific analysis of the core from different regions of the state available to teachers and students on-line is under development and funded in part by DTE Energy Foundation.

We are commonly asked by teachers from around the state if we will travel to their area for presentations, but to date we have restricted our travel to within one hour of Kalamazoo for logistical reasons. We are, however, anxious to pursue partnerships that will allow us to broaden our area of impact and make these resources available in other parts of the state.


Scientific Content and Format of CoreKids’ Presentations

Four overarching “big ideas” in Earth system science form the basis for our program: Earth is ancient, Earth is constantly changing, Earth is rich in natural resources, and human life impacts Earth.


Current CoreKids learning modules use geologic resources based at MGRRE – samples and data from across Michigan - to illustrate these “big ideas” in ways that are relevant to students’ lives and/or their immediate surroundings. All students have the opportunity to put their hands on rocks from thousands of feet below their feet that are hundreds of millions of years old.

Six primary presentation modules can be adapted for most audiences from preschool through high school: (1) Michigan Geology, (2) Michigan’s Geological Natural Resources – minerals, water, oil, gas, coastlines, gas storage, CO2 storage, (3) Sands, Beaches and Coastlines, (4) Petroleum Geology, (5) Hydrogeology and (6) Climate Change and Geologic Carbon Sequestration. Each presentation includes an introduction describing geology and the jobs that geologists do. We are in the process of adapting each of the presentations and related activities for on-line access. Occasionally other topics are developed to meet specific curriculum needs as requested by teachers – for example landforms and glaciers are popular topics in younger elementary classrooms.


CoreKids classroom visits generally last from one to two hours per group, depending on each school’s scheduling needs and the ages of the students. Field trips to MGRRE sometimes fill an entire day and include several topics and activities. Most visits consist of an interactive multimedia presentation on the chosen topic with time for students to do related hands-on activities.


For example, when we talk to students from third grade through middle school about climate change, we play The Carbon Game during which students play the role of carbon atoms bouncing between various stations representing steps in the carbon cycle. The game illustrates the complexity of the system in an easily understandable way and opens the door for an understanding of renewable versus non-renewable energy sources and the need for new strategies to reduce atmospheric CO2. Older students attending field trips with extended time availability carry out activities on global climate change and carbon dioxide sequestration developed by the Keystone Science School/Keystone Center for Science and Public Policy which encourage students to understand the global nature of our current CO2emissions problem and to model possible solutions.


During our natural resources presentations, students learn the definitions of porosity and permeability, and then younger students play a game called KidRocks to reinforce the concept that “Rocks Have Holes”. Groups of students model porous/permeable, porous/impermeable and non-porous/impermeable rocks by standing the appropriate distances from one another and letting the facilitator - playing the role of a drop of water or oil – attempt to find her way into their pore spaces. Students of all ages demonstrate porosity and permeability with our Rocks Have Holes activity by pumping air through porous rocks with bicycle pumps and examining thin-section photomicrographs of porous and non-porous rocks. Middle school students working in groups (competitively or non-competitively) extract information from a “research resource” to either create posters or generate lists demonstrating how geological natural resources are used in everyday life. Older middle school students and high school students complete a data based activity (graphing real porosity and permeability values) and examine the corresponding rock core (from their geographic region when possible) to compare easily observable rock properties with the values on their graph. All of these activities help students to better visualize where many of our geological natural resources come from and how important they are in our lives.


Most CoreKids presentations on natural resources and/or climate change conclude with discussion of Michigan’s porous rocks and their potential for sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to help mitigate climate change. MGRRE researchers are actively engaged in geologic carbon sequestration research and can provide cutting edge scientific information that can go directly into classrooms.


CoreKids visits have become an integral part of Earth science instruction in several area school districts. In addition to its popularity with teachers and students in SW Michigan, CoreKids has been well received by the geosciences outreach community. A 2010 paper by Gonzales, et al (Who Will Fill the Geoscience Workforce Supply Gap; Env.Sci.Technol., 44, 550-555; http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es902234g) addressed ways in which universities might increase exposure of high school students to Earth science, listing four programs that were already doing so – University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, Clemson and Western Michigan University’s CoreKids program. CoreKids can serve as a model outreach program for other universities and communities; a former WMU graduate student, Amy Noack, M.S., currently of EOG Resources, is using CoreKids as a model to develop Youth Education materials and outreach events for the West Texas Geological Society.


WMU CoreKids Project: Financial Information

The CoreKids K-12 Earth Science Outreach Program was initiated in 2007 with funds from the Department of Energy received by WMU Geosciences Department faculty (Harrison, Grammer, Barnes, Gillespie) to create a new center on campus - the Michigan Geological Repository for Research and Education. From its inception, a basic tenet of CoreKids was to provide services to schools and non-profit organizations at no charge. DTE Energy Foundation provided $65,000 per year during 2008, 2009 and 2010, and Consumers Energy Foundation provided $50,000 in 2009. Consumers Energy Foundation will again provide $50,000 to operate the program in 2011, with the expectation that we will determine how to sustain the program in the future during the coming year.


We are currently seeking funds to further develop CoreKids and/or to continue the current level of services and current projects into the future. In the coming year we will be seeking competitive funding from NSF to evaluate CoreKids instructional materials, and hope to be invited to submit proposals to new corporations and foundations for continued operation. Ongoing expenses to provide services at the current level include staff salaries (2), expenses for creation and maintenance of displays and new instructional materials, purchase of leave-behind items: rock kits for students and books for classrooms, and travel expenses. In the future we hope to secure funds to provide student and faculty volunteers with stipends/honorariums.


For additional information about CoreKids, please contact:

Susan F. Grammer, Outreach Coordinator

Michigan Geological Repository for Research and Education

Western Michigan University Department of Geosciences

1903 W. Michigan Ave.

Kalamazoo, MI 49008

(269) 387-8642

[email protected]

www.wmich.edu/corekids


For information about becoming a CoreKids sponsor, please contact:

John Greenhoe, Director of Foundation Relations and Development Communications

1903 W. Michigan Ave.

Kalamazoo, MI 49008

[email protected]

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Tags: earth science, k-12 earth, science, earth, program, wmucorekids, corekids, outreach