Conference in Review Issue

We are wrapping up our 2015-2016 volume of Interactions with a special OSEE 2016 Conference in Review Issue.  This issue includes conference and PD resources, plus links from workshop presenters and vendors, to let you integrate these learning tools into your teaching practice.

OSEE PD Day at a Glance

On April 16th, educators participated in the OSEE PD Day at Camp Kawartha Environment Centre, located on the Trent Nature Sanctuary.  The day included:

• Hand-on workshops
• Learning new skills to engage youth in learning for, about, and in the environment
• Classroom-ready activities and resources
• Networking and brainstorming with fellow educators

We were incredibly fortunate to have such beautiful weather and fantastic workshop presenters who shared their experience, knowledge and engaging activities. Our most sincere thanks to our site hosts, Camp Kawartha Environment Centre and Trent Nature Sanctuary for donating the site for the day.

OSEE PD Day Workshop Summaries and Resources

The Art of Puppetry In Outdoor Education
Glen Caradus of Paddling Puppeteers | Primary
Glen of the Paddling Puppeteers presented an engaging puppet show and  shared with participants simple puppetry techniques to use in outdoor education programs.
Learn more about Paddling Puppeteers at http://schoolshows.ca/listing/paddling-puppeteers/

Connecting To Nature Through Traditional Skills
Sherri Owen of the Kawartha Outdoor Education Centre | Junior – Intermediate – Senior
Sherri delivered a fantastic workshop about practicing traditional skills through a series of hands-on activities.  Participants were able to directly interact with the natural environment, find material to create a bow drill and fire, make cording and build a  wigwam.
Learn more about Camp Kawartha’s Outdoor & Environmental Education Programs & Curriculum Links at http://campkawartha.ca/outdoor-education/programs/

Create An Innovator’s Culture With Hopscotch
Diane Boulanger | Junior – Intermediate
In the digital world everything is made in code.  Diane showed how coding can be used to engage students across various curriculum with the Hopscotch app for the iPad.  Coding can be taught as early as the primary grades using Hopscotch.
Learn more about Hopscotch and to view Diane’s Prezi visit:

• https://prezi.com/w7k4cae-lv9-/create-an-innovators-culture-with-hopscotch/
• Hopscotch Curriculum – Learn to Code

Sherlock Would Approve
Paul Elliot of Trent University | Junior – Intermediate – Senior
In this session Paul showed both low-tech and high-tech ways to promote the skills of observation, critical thinking and reflections on the relationship of humans with their environment.
Learn more about Paul or to contact him at https://www.trentu.ca/education/faculty-and-research/full-time-faculty/paul-elliott

Tree Identification
Anita Payne | General Interest / Personal Development
Anita led a wonderful session exploring tree identification.  After a short indoor discussion of resources, participants went outside to physically identify trees.
Learn more about Tree Identification at http://ontariotrees.com/id/howtoid.php

Hands-on Water Education: An Introduction to the new Project WET 2.0 Activity Guide
Teresa Rigg of Project WET Canada | Primary-Junior-Intermediate-Senior
Teresa demonstrated to participants some of the many fun, hands-on cooperative learning activities from the Project WET 2.0 program.
Learn more about Project WET 2.0 at http://www.projectwet.org/teach-and-learn

Discovering Nature In Spring
Drew Monkman & Jacob Rodenburg | Primary – Junior – Intermediate
Using the five senses, participants learned how to open children’s eyes to the wonder of nature. Many of the activities will be taken from the Big Book of Nature Activities, which will be available in June, 2016.
Learn more about Discovering Nature at http://www.newsociety.com/Contributors/M/Monkman-Drew

EcoLinks at a Glance

OSEE’s annual conference, Ecolinks, was held May 13th at Jack Smythe Field Centre and Terra Cotta Conservation Area in Terra Cotta, Caledon, Ontario. The day included:

• Interactive workshops held both indoors and outdoors
• Exhibitors highlighting environmental education resources for educators
• A guided hike through the forest to lunch
• The OSEE Annual General Meeting

Many heartfelt thanks to our site hosts, the Peel District School Board Field Centres and Credit Valley Conservation, for generously donating the use of their sites for the conference.  It was wonderful spending the day in such a beautiful setting! Thanks as well to our workshop presenters for sharing their wisdom, activities, and resources for environmental education.  Finally, thanks to all conference attendees for coming out and being part of the day!

EcoLinks 2016 Workshop Summaries and Resources

Accessibility in the Garden – Adapting Outdoor Play to Meet the Needs of Every Learner
Catherine Hobbis and Holly Marsh of Ecosource | Primary
This workshop showed how to adapt activities for individuals with different needs, and provided hands-on experiences that can be replicated in your classroom.
Learn more about more EcoSource Programs at http://ecosource.ca/

Hands-on Curriculum for a Crowded Planet
Raizell Slobodsky of Population Education | Intermediate – Senior
Participants engaged in activities that help students learn and think critically about many of the environmental challenges of our growing human population including modeling, concept-mapping, role-playing, cooperative group problem-solving and balanced debate.
Learn more about Population Education at http://populationeducation.org/

Schoolyard Bird-Blitz
Liza Barney of Bird Studies Canada | Primary – Junior – Intermediate – Senior Liz introduced Bird Studies Canada’s Schoolyard Bird-Blitz , sharing resources to use with students to facilitate this fun, annual spring bird count in your schoolyard!
Learn more about more EcoSource Programs at http://www.birdscanada.org/education/school/?targetpg=birdblitz

Why the Campfire is the Perfect 21st Century Learning Tool
Rob Ridley of Peel District School Board | Primary – Junior – Intermediate
Rob showed how participants could use a simple yet effective campfire as a learning tool in their classroom space to listen, share, discuss and question.
Learn more great ideas from Rob Ridley and participate in this next twitter chat on August 17

• https://twitter.com/RangerRidley?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
• http://www.peelschools.org/schools/fieldcentres/Pages/default.aspx

Tree ID and Measurement
Mike McMillan of ACER | Primary – Junior – Intermediate – Senior
Mike shared how to monitor the annual growth of trees using Smithsonian protocols.
Learn more about ACER, find great resources and use Treepedia (Tree ID) at http://www.acer-acre.ca/resources

Using Outdoor Environments to Foster Student Inquiry
Pam Miller and Bonnie Anderson | Primary – Junior – Intermediate
Pam and Bonnie led participants through methodologies to engage students in meaningful inquiry that helps them become informed citizen scientists.
Learn more about using outdoor environments to foster student inquiry by downloading the following resources:

• Three types of Investigable Questions
• Turn the Why into What Questions
• Checklist for Evaluating Questions
• Fields of Investigations
• Three Types of Field Investigation Questions

School Gardens and Seed Libraries: Nourishing Minds and Student Bodies
Jacob Kearey-Moreland of Toronto Seed Library | Primary – Junior – Intermediate – Senior
Jacob led discussions about the challenges and opportunities of starting or sustaining a school garden, seed library, or other community growing initiative.
Learn how to use the Toronto Seed Library and connect with Jacob for further questions at:

• http://www.torontoseedlibrary.org/
• How-to-Start-a-Seed-Library
• https://www.facebook.com/jacob.keareymoreland
• Super Seeding the Movement

Seeing the world with an environmental eye! Using the outdoors as a laboratory to promote 21st Century learning skills
Yovita Gwekwerere of Laurentian University | Primary – Junior – Intermediate – Senior
This workshop featured a walk in the woods followed by an indoor session focusing on exploring how the outdoors can be used as a laboratory for teaching virtually any topic in the science curriculum.
To learn more, you can contact Yovita at https://laurentian.ca/faculty/ygwekwerere

Revisioning sustainable communities using eco-arts design and animation tools
Les Luxemberger | Intermediate – Senior
Les illuminated how to make a short animated film and the tools and methods needed to help students design their own.
To learn more you can contact Les at http://lesluxemburger.com/

Music, Art and Creativity in Outdoor Education
Rachel Stewart of Toronto Region Conservation Authority | Primary – Junior – Intermediate – Senior
This hands-on session explored ways to use music and art to immerse students in their environment, and connect to their local environs.
To learn more, see http://monarchteacher.ca/home/workshops.dot

EcoLinks Exhibitors

A special thank you to our EcoLinks exhibitors for bringing wonderful resources for educators.

ProjectWET Canada http://www.projectwet.org/
Forests Ontario http://www.forestsontario.ca/
Worldstrides https://worldstrides.com/
The Roberta Bondar Foundation www.therobertabondarfoundation.org/
The Council of Outdoor Educators of Ontario http://www.coeo.org/
Happenstance Bookstore www.facebook.com/Happenstancebooksandyarns

Presenting your 2016-2017 OSEE Board of Directors

Back row: Elizabeth Wren, Tamara Anderson, George Raposo, Jennifer Andrade, Kimberlee Henderson, Katya Seckar, Liza Barney, Manish Mehta, Karmi Shami; Front row: Christine Chapel, Billie Joe Reid, Nazreen Subhan, Mike McMillan; Absent: Romanda Simpson, Laura Leet, Penny Blake, Sarah Moye

President: Katya Seckar
First Vice President: Karmi Shami
Second Vice President: Kimberlee Henderson
Treasurer & Social Media Director: George Raposo
Secretary: Mike McMillan
Webmaster & Interactions Co-Editor: Nazreen Subhan
Interactions Co-Editor: Christine Chapel
Membership Coordinator: Romanda Simpson
Central Regional Director: Jennifer Andrade
Eastern Regional Director: Laura Leet
Southwestern Regional Director: Tamara Anderson
Director-at-large: Sarah Moye
Director-at-large: Billie Jo Reid
Director-at-large: Elizabeth Wren
Director-at-large: Manish Mehta
Director-at-large: Liza Barney
Director-at-large: Penny Blake

OSEE Award for Leadership in Environmental Education

At the AGM, the OSEE Award for Leadership in Environmental Education was awarded to Bonnie Anderson for her decades of dedication to environmental education, and her unique, fun, and thought-provoking approaches to engaging learners of all ages. Congratulations, Bonnie!

 

 

 

Annual President’s Message, 2016

Looking back over the 2015-2016 year, it’s exciting to see the momentum OSEE has built in our goal to serve you as educators. As you may recall, in the spring of 2014 our new board asked for input from OSEE members past and present, in order to learn how OSEE can best support educators across Ontario. Last year we began to implement changes based on your input, beginning with a more informal, e-newsletter format for Interactions, OSEE’s professional journal. Our next step was to re-envision the conference in response to members identifying price as a barrier. To bring down the conference fees and make the conference more accessible to educators, we sought community partnerships. We feel extremely fortunate and grateful that for the second consecutive year, Peel Field Centres made Jack Smythe Field Centre available free of charge for the annual Ecolinks Conference, and Credit Valley Conservation hosted the Ecolinks lunch and AGM free of charge.

With a successful year behind our new board, this past year we were able to tackle additional feedback we received through our member survey.

When surveyed, members told us they’d like to see more than one PD event offered by OSEE, in various locations in Ontario. To integrate this feedback, in April 2016 we offered an OSEE PD Day in addition to the May Ecolinks conference. The April one-day conference was held at the Kawartha Environment Centre and Trent Nature Preserve near Peterborough, Ontario. Nine workshops were offered over the course of the day, lending expertise and ideas to educators about school seed gardens, outdoor inquiry, connecting to nature through traditional skills, water education, and more. We’d like to thank the Kawartha Environment Centre for freely hosting us for the day.

With Interactions now more accessible in an online format, we also worked this year to make sure it contained articles that spoke to needs identified by teachers. At the OSEE Board annual summer planning meeting, we looked at these questions, from how to find funding for environmental projects, and where to find or borrow tools and physical resources, to how to start a school garden or where to go on great field trips. We created feature articles around these topics and others. Many of our board members took on researching answers to these questions, or locating a local expert to write a guest column. We hope you have found these articles, and all Interactions content, helpful to you as you work to green your school and your teaching practice. We are always open to hearing what you’d like to learn about, either in Interactions or at conferences, in order to serve you better. We also welcome you to share your wisdom regarding Interactions or a future workshop.

None of OSEE’s events or publications would have been possible without all of the work done by OSEE’s volunteer board members. Heartfelt thanks for all your work in publishing Interactions and organising our two conferences! It’s been a true team effort. It’s been an honour to serve as your President for a second year, and to work alongside such enthusiastic and hardworking board members.

I’d also like to send a huge thank you to the amazing workshop presenters at our Ecolinks Conference and April PD Event who volunteered their time to share their passion and wisdom. Thanks as well to our exhibitors, for their support of OSEE and spreading the word about quality environmental education programs and resources.

And lastly, thanks to all of you, our members, for the work you do day in and day out, inspiring the next generation to care for the health of our planet. Please let us know how we can continue to support you in this crucial endeavour.

Best regards,
Katya Seckar
President
Ontario Society of Environmental Education
katya.seckar@osee.ca

Upcoming Events

Water Docs @ School Action Projects is an 8-month learning and action program for Ontario Grade 8 students. Free information webinars begin Aug 30:
http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ectglfyy94be0395&llr=zahzwidab

Teacher Resources

Funding Opportunities
http://www.ontarioecoschools.org/tools-resources/funding-opportunities/

TD Friends of the Environment Foundation’s next granting cycle closes on July 15^th https://fef.td.com/funding/