From mogk at montana.edu Thu Jan 30 16:14:43 2003 From: mogk at montana.edu (David Mogk) Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 17:14:43 -0700 Subject: [Biowksp] Acceptance to Teaching Biocomplexity Workshop--Welcome! Message-ID: <3E39BFF3.2020003@montana.edu> Dear Friends and Colleagues: We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected as a participant in the 2003 Teaching Biocomplexity in the Geosciences Workshop. This workshop is part of the NAGT On the Cutting Edge professional development workshop series, funded by a generous grant from the NSF Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement National Dissemination program. We will be facilitating communications about the workshop via this listserv, and workshop-related materials will also be regularly posted on the website at: http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/biocomplexity03/ The workshop is hosted by Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, although the actual workshop venue will be nearby Chico Hot Springs Resort. Please plan to travel to Bozeman on April 2, arriving before 5 PM. We will plan to meet you at the airport and will use vans to shuttle participants to Chico (about an hour away) in the early and late afternoon. We would like everyone to arrive before dinner so you can participate in the opening session that evening. Workshop activities on April 3-4 will include demonstrations of class activities, large and small group discussions, focused working groups (to plan, develop and review curricular materials), and plenty of opportunities for informal networking with colleagues. A field trip to Yellowstone National Park is planned for April 5, and departures for travel home will be Sunday April 6. We will also be working to "capture" as much of the workshop as possible in a web environment for broad dissemination to other interested colleagues. So we will be regularly posting activities, presentations, and summaries of discussion sessions. A number of participants will be asked (by a separate communication) to present demonstrations or lead discussions according to the interests submitted in your applications. Whether or not you are asked to make a formal presentation (we have a limited number of time slots), we hope that you will contribute resources and be part of pre- and post-workshop activities. Biocomplexity has been identified as an important emerging theme, and this workshop is intended to be the first step of an ongoing process to help bring this topic into the mainstream of (geo)science education. Consequently, one of the charges of the workshop is to develop an action plan for "next steps". So please be thinking ahead about how you would like to continue to participate (e.g. continued networking; development and testing of course materials; development of collections of images, databases, and tools for classroom use; making plans for future proposal writing...) We will be sending out additional information about the workshop in the near future. Please be ready to: ? Register; we will have an on-line registration form posted on the workshop website requesting information about your travel plans and any special needs you might have. (This form will be posted next week). Please register by March 1, 2003. ? Make your travel arrangements; please plan to arrive in Bozeman, MT on Wednesday April 2 in time for dinner and the evening session. Daily airline flights to Bozeman are available on Northwest, Delta, United, and Horizon airlines. You, or your institution, are responsible for the costs of travel to/from the workshop. However, there are funds in the workshop budget to assist those for whom attending the workshop creates a financial hardship. Please contact us if you are in this category. Our grant will cover the costs of all workshop activities while you are here. ? Contribute Resources; we will have a posting tool on the website where you can submit URLs of resources or activities that you regularly use in your classes (or send these directly to mogk at montana.edu). We'll catalog these for use at the workshop and for distribution in the Digital Library for Earth System Education. This will be the start of a thematic collection that will link scientific content, instructional practices and activities, assessment strategies, and other resources to support teaching biocomplexity in a wide variety of instructional settings. ? Participate; we will be using the listserv to send some pre-workshop materials (please read these, and make suggestions for additional materials of interest), and feel free to use this listserv to begin e-conversations about topics of interest, issues you want to address at the workshop, queries, advice... We are very excited about the way the workshop program is developing. Based on the information you submitted on the application form, it is clear that there are a lot of common interests about teaching biocomplexity as well as a lot of good ideas about how you would like to proceed. We think this will be a very stimulating workshop indeed. More information about the workshop will be sent to you as the program develops. Please feel free to contact any one of us if you have questions or suggestions concerning the workshop organization. For now, let us welcome you to the workshop, and we look forward to having you as a participant in April! Best wishes, The Organizing Committee Dave Mogk mogk at montana.edu Susan Humphris shumphris at whoi.edu Dave McGinnis mcgidavi at isu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://serc.carleton.edu/pipermail/biowksp/attachments/20030130/7d2f68a5/attachment.html