News Archive 2004
New Look for Education and Outreach Website—Just in Time for School! (Posted 11/4/04)
Targeted at students, the Study Hall webpage includes a variety of activities and information designed to pique the scientific interests of kids in grades K-12.
With a new school year looming, ACRF staff involved in the Education and Outreach Program worked with the ARM communications team to develop and implement an updated Education website. The redesigned website includes updated content and a fresh look to complement the recent ARM website redesign. For continuity, the website still features the familiar faces of Professor Polar Bear, Teacher Turtle, and PI Prairie Dog (each representing an ACRF site), but now provides easier navigation and great new learning activities.
The Education website is now divided into three specialized and easy-to-navigate sections: Homeroom, Study Hall, and Teachers' Lounge. Homeroom features information about ACRF education and outreach efforts, providing news, events and publications. Study Hall is a resource for students, containing quizzes, activities, and commonly asked questions and answers about climate, weather, and global warming. This area also includes a new "Just for Fun" page that offers coloring pages, word seeks, and more. The Teachers' Lounge provides teachers with sample lesson plans, activity ideas, and valuable background information.
A DOE stipulation for ACRF funding is to provide educational resources to anyone interested in learning more about climate sciences, weather, research techniques, or instrumentation. To this end, the website serves as a cost effective and globally accessible reference. For more information regarding this update, see the media advisory (PDF, 37K).
ARM Education and Outreach Judges Science Fairs (Posted 3/18/04)
This spring, ARM Education and Outreach helped the local community of Northern New Mexico by judging science fairs with other educators and scientists. Margo Bachman went to the Santo Domingo School of the Santo Domingo Pueblo, New Mexico to assist judging projects from 5, 6, 7 and 8 graders. Tina Summer and Janet Lynch went to the McCurdy School in Espanola, New Mexico for a high school science fair. They all spotted some excellent projects in environmental science, biology, chemistry and physics and were glad to help their local community.
ARM Education and Outreach Expands Horizons (Posted 3/18/04)
Expanding Your Horizons is a technical career workshop for young women to increase their interest and awareness of math and science and also to provide students an opportunity to meet and develop contacts with women working in traditionally male occupations. This year Janet Lynch and Margo Bachman gave a morning and afternoon presentation on Climate Change, combined with 3 sets of experiments to groups of young women from all over the region. Students were taught basic concepts about the atmosphere and climate change and then engaged in hands on activities as they experimented with making a greenhouse to simulate the green house effect, making clouds to demonstrate the necessary elements to form clouds and melting sea ice to show how water levels are affected when sea ice melts. (All lessons available at: www.arm.gov).
Coastal Erosion: What is it, How is it Related to Climate Change and Why Should We Care? (Posted 1/16/04)
Recently the term "coastal erosion" has been popping up in the news, but what does it mean? If you look up the word erosion in the dictionary, it references the root word "erode," which means to "eat into, wear away, or disintegrate." So coastal erosion is erosion that occurs along coastlines. With about half of the population of the United States (and the world) living close to the ocean, damage from coastal erosion is a very costly problem. For more information, see the Fall 2003 Climate Education Update.
