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Why Study Boreal Forests? * Coverage - Boreal forests cover approximately 14.5% of the earth's land surface. Learn More » * Carbon Storage - The great expanse and large quantity of carbon contained in vegetation and soils (particularly peat) make the boreal biome the world's largest terrestrial carbon reservoir. Learn More » * Changing Climate - At high latitudes in North America, substantial warming and drying has occurred, and this trend is predicted to continue. Increased temperatures in the boreal region release large quantities of carbon previously immobilized in the cold and frozen soils. The large quantity of carbon contained in the cold and frozen soils of the boreal biome is susceptible to mobilization under a changing climate system. Learn More » * Fire and Regrowth - Warming and drying associated with climate change increase the frequency and intensity of the boreal fire regime, and lead to changes in vegetation composition and the carbon cycle. Learn More »

Why Study Boreal Forests? * Coverage - Boreal forests cover approximately 14.5% of the earth's land surface. Learn More » * Carbon Storage - The great expanse and large quantity of carbon contained in vegetation and soils (particularly peat) make the boreal biome the world's largest terrestrial carbon reservoir. Learn More » * Changing Climate - At high latitudes in North America, substantial warming and drying has occurred, and this trend is predicted to continue. Increased temperatures in the boreal region release large quantities of carbon previously immobilized in the cold and frozen soils. The large quantity of carbon contained in the cold and frozen soils of the boreal biome is susceptible to mobilization under a changing climate system. Learn More » * Fire and Regrowth - Warming and drying associated with climate change increase the frequency and intensity of the boreal fire regime, and lead to changes in vegetation composition and the carbon cycle. Learn More »

What happens when you: Allow students to determine what they need to learn, and then enable students to manage their own learning activities?

I can say without hesitation that all my traditional educational experiences combined, everything from grade school to grad school, have not taught me as much about learning and being a learner as blogging has. My ability to easily consume other people's ideas, share my own in return, and communicate with other educators around the world has led me to dozens of smart, passionate teachers from whom I learn every day. It's also led me to technologies and techniques that leverage this newfound network in ways that look nothing like what's happening in traditional classrooms.

I remain very, very concerned with the notion that all we have to do is let the kids connect with the world.... There's a fallacy there, and my experience with how much really deep teaching of digital ethics we've had to do at SLA to counter all that the kids come in the door thinking about the digital world.

Chris Harbeck and Darren Kuropatwa are mathematics teachers in Canada; Chris at Sargent Park School, a junior high school in Winnipeg and Darren at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate only a few blocks from Sargent Park. In April 2008 they brought a few of their students to Manitoba for the Pan-Canadian Interactive Literacy Forum to speak about their learning experiences in their respective math classes using Web 2.0 tools. Listen to Chris and Darren and their students speak.

# Ning, a social networking system which lets you create a community * An example: The Falmouth Kids Global Climate Change Institute is a unique opportunity for teachers and students to communicate and collaborate with a global audience as they study the causes and effects of global climate change. This project was designed to inspire teachers to empower students to use Web 2.0 tools in contextual learning environments

Free model-based learning resources and software We are delighted to be able to offer a growing collection of free software and student materials that use this software. Finding it is a bit of a treasure hunt. Sorry. The software is being developed in different projects, so we have not collected it all in one place. The following describes the major places to look. * Three powerful modeling environments * Activity authoring * Algebra interactives * Sustainable development education * VideoPaper builder * License and copyright You may also wish to visit our complete Software Download Center.

To start with, the game is completely FREE (I love that word). Better than that, this is a perfect game simulation for middle school and high school teachers looking to provide a reflective learning experience for students interested in how the environment is affected by choices made by local or state government concerning energy production and use. It combines the addictiveness of Lemonade Stand with the deep control and management tools of SimCity. With only 150 turns to create a thriving economy and growing population based on realistic environmental practices, I thought I would be presented with simplistic choices, and be railroaded into some pre-scripted "save the Earth, reduce energy consumption", but I was happily wrong.

Fair warning, you could easily eat up a big chunk of your day following the links in this post! Buy hey, you'll be helping out the world a bit in the process. Here's what I found :

Welcome to the Internet's largest global community of connected classrooms! Safely connect, collaborate and learn using our leading protected email and blog solutions for schools and districts

Some fun in the classroom, with a little learning going on in the background.

Global Warming Using Data, Charts, Models, Animations, Web Links and Videos to Learn About Climate Change

Welcome to our Science Alive project! We are students in two Middle School Grade 8 classes that have been working on a Science topic of our own choosing. First, we chose a topic and then we had to create our own wiki page that demonstrated our understanding of our topic. We had to show Higher-Order Thinking Skills as seen in Blooms Taxonomy.

I will be Ustreaming this STEM Symposium from Olin College of Engineering DOME Foundation Spring Symposium: Leadership for STEM Education: The Power of Collaboration About Olin ~ Mission: Olin College prepares future leaders through an innovative engineering education that bridges science and technology, enterprise, and society. Skilled in independent learning and the art of design, our graduates will seek opportunities and take initiative to make a positive difference in the world.

Coal River Mountain is the site of an absurdity. I learned about Coal River Mountain from students at Virginia Tech last fall. They were concerned about Coal River Mountain, but at that time most of them were working to support Barack Obama. They assumed Barack Obama would not allow such outrages to continue.

These are the things I think I should do at the beginning of any globally collaborative project. (Kim Cofino provides lots of insights!) Define Project Goals ~ Develop Explicit Expectations ~ Develop a Communications Structure ~ Determine Assessment Methods ~ Design Matters

"Some bold steps to make your carbon footprint smaller" Articles on Act, Eat, Invent, Learn, Live, Move, and Build

New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday 10 July 2007. Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.

A chunk of ice spreading across 18 square kilometers (7 square miles) has broken off a Canadian ice shelf in the Arctic, scientists said Tuesday. He hasn't seen any ice in weeks. Plans to set up an ice camp in February had to be abandoned when usually dependable ice didn't form for the second year in a row. "Nobody on the ship is surprised anymore," Stern said. "We've been trying to get the word out for the longest time now that things are happening fast and they're going to continue to happen fast."