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| The Rainforest Connection Live! | |
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MONTCLAIR, NJ—Panama’s rainforest will come into United States classrooms next week, with live videoconferencing from a tropical forest research facility. The broadcasts will be converted to streaming video for website viewing and archiving. Dr. Jacalyn Willis, director of PRISM (Professional Resources in Science and Mathematics) at Montclair State University’s College of Science and Mathematics, and Gregory Willis will host the 40 telecasts. With several expert colleagues, they will present sessions in both English and Spanish to classes in New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, and Texas from January 12-23. The researchers have studied wildlife on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in Panama for a month each year for the past 20 years, carrying out a long-term census of mammals to study how populations of different species on the island change from year to year. Located in Gatun Lake, part of the Panama Canal waterway, BCI is a field station operated by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Students will be able to talk with the Willises and their associates directly from this forest location through live videoconferences. Two teachers from New Jersey, Katrina Macht, a 4th-5th grade teacher from the Bridgewater-Raritan School District, and Anna Mazzaro, a full-time elementary education specialist of PRISM will help host the program. Researchers will talk about their experiences, their research projects, and ecological principles, and will answer students' questions. The Willises created the Rainforest Connection, an interactive email project, eight years ago. The husband and wife team write regular journal entries for students back in New Jersey, where they live most of the year, and students may correspond with the team in Panama. The Rainforest Connection is coordinated by PRISM, which provides services to school districts in the teaching of science and mathematics. The research team in Panama has posted regular journal entries on the Rainforest Connection website (http://rainforest.montclair.edu), describing what they see and experience as they carry out their projects in the forest. The Rainforest Connection is a useful source for background information on forests, how researchers study animals, basic ecological principles, animal ecology, photos, video clips, interviews with scientists, and lesson plans. The website has a Spanish language version as well, to include bilingual students in the United States and students in Latin Rainforest Connection Live! – 2 American countries. Teachers are using the Rainforest Connection materials to prepare their students for next week’s videoconference discussions. Project Director Jacalyn Willis commented, "This is very exciting, and a first for New Jersey educational institutions: to actually develop our own videoconference with classes from home, and live from a research site in an exotic location. It gives totally new meaning to the Rainforest Connection as an interactive teaching venue." Similar programming from Montclair State University and from field sites, as well as distance learning courses for the professional development of K-12 teachers, will be made available to more schools partnered with PRISM, she said. New Jersey schools participating in the project include Passaic Valley Regional High School and schools in the districts of East Orange, Paterson, Park Ridge, Passaic, Bridgewater-Raritan, Newark, Emerson, Jersey City, Fairlawn, Totowa, Vineland, and Kearny. New York schools will attend through the Ward Melville Heritage Organization on Long Island. Several schools from Texas, within the Temple and Waco Independent School Districts, will also participate. This new international K-12 project showcases the Verizon/ANJ Newark Portal and the growing partnerships between higher education and K-12 schools. Verizon has taken a leadership position in this project and NJEDge.net provided technical expertise. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has made their research facility available for the telecasts and contributed to the support of the PRISM team on the island field station. The live video connection was made possible by funding from PRISM at Montclair State University. Support for several schools to participate was provided by the Turrell Fund, the Martinson Family Foundation, and the Hoffman-LaRoche Educational Foundation. Coordination of web video-streaming involves staff at NJEDge.net. Jacalyn Willis holds a doctoral degree in biology from the City University of New York. Gregory Willis is a contractor who also hunts and is a naturalist. He has done field census work on mammals in tropical forests in several countries in Latin America. Anna Mazzaro, a PRISM staff member and elementary classroom teacher, will also appear in and assist in directing the broadcasts. Katrina Macht, a fifth grade teacher and award-winning environmental educator from Hillside Intermediate School in Bridgewater-Raritan, will join the project in Panama to provide an educator’s commentary. Ricardo Moreno, a Panamanian researcher who collaborates with the Willises in an ocelot study, and fieldworker Bonifacio DeLeon, will appear in Spanish language session. Logistics associated with broadcast from a rainforest are many, and the team has had to be inventive. The Panama field team is supported by technical expertise from Eric Kulmala, Video Portal and Satellite Engineer from Verizon, who operates the satellite dish and video conferencing equipment transported to Panama for this project. In New Jersey, the team includes Charlie McMickle, Assistant Director of Technical Services at of NJEdge.Net; Dan Cleary, a VerizonVideo Portal engineer; and John O'Brien provided video support at Montclair State University, and will host several school groups in the MSU video conference center. The session schedule and topics,are on the website http://rainforest.montclair.edu/panama/video/events.htm |
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