Dear African GLOBE Partners,
Greetings! We have much to share with you! We hope that the information found in this newsletter is helpful to you as you recruit, train and mentor the GLOBE teachers in your service areas. Please let us know if you would like to see any additional information in future newsletters. We look forward to receiving your feedback and to facilitating your GLOBE efforts!
Best regards,
Teresa Kennedy, Director, International/U.S. Partnerships and Outreach
Rebecca Boger, Regional Desk Officer, Africa
Sheila Yule, GLOBE Learning Communities and School Networks
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Regional Report from the GLOBE Annual Conference, 31 July - 5 August 2005, Prague, Czech Republic |
Special thanks and congratulations should go to the 2005 Annual Conference Organizing Committee Members, Sponsors, and especially TEREZA for their hard work. The efforts of TEREZA staff, volunteers, teachers and students truly exhibited why GLOBE Czech Republic has been so successful - they have a strong community. The 9th Annual GLOBE Conference brought together GLOBE Country Coordinators and U.S. Partnership Coordinators, Education and Science Principal Investigators, GLOBE Program Staff, and others to address key education and science elements of GLOBE. A major focus of the Conference was regarding the "Next Generation GLOBE" (NGG). The three main aspects of NGG discussed were: (1) regional consortia (grouping of countries to collaborate on regional GLOBE implementation), (2) a projects-based approach to organizing educational and scientific activities, and (3) a "GLOBE Schools Network" (GSN), consisting of a network of active GLOBE schools that are integrated into specific scientific research projects. All conference presentations have been posted online. View all information about the conference.
* An exciting component of the conference included a presentation by past GLOBE students who have initiated the GLOBE Alumni International Network. Encourage your past GLOBE students to remain involved in the Program and to join the GLOBE Alumni International Network!
During the Conference in Prague, representatives from three African countries met during three different break-out sessions to discuss how to advance the goal of forming a strong regional consortium. GLOBE country representatives included Mrs. Margaret Besong (Cameroon), Mr. Emmanuel Gyamera and Mr. Martin Tawiah (Ghana), and Mr. Albert Rafalimanana and Minister Haja Nirina Razafinjatovo (Madagascar).
Several useful GLOBE documents were available regarding: Master Trainer Program, Regionalization, an example of a Regional Constitution written by GLOBE Europe and how to formally request to host the 2007 GLOBE Learning Expedition.
A draft regional GLOBE Africa Consortium was drafted in English and after her return to Cameroon, Mrs. Besong translated the document into French. The primary mission of the Consortium is to promote GLOBE throughout Africa. The meeting representatives proposed having a Chair and Deputy Chair, each having a two-year appointment. These draft documents will be sent to countries throughout Africa for comments. All GLOBE Countries throughout Africa will be invited to participate in the GLOBE Africa Consortium.
Finding funding for the Regional Consortium as well as for national activities was discussed. Developing Africa themes of relevance such as malaria and monitoring the Niger River among others were suggested as possible themes to look for funding from private and public sources.
Mrs. Margaret Besong was nominated as the Point of Contact for Africa regional discussions. Her contact information is listed below:
Mrs. Margaret Besong
GLOBE Program Country Coordinator
IGP/ESG MINEDUC
BP 1600 Yaounde,
CAMEROON
Telephone: 237 31.72.34
Fax: 237 23.12.02 or 237 23.07.79
Email: margieb84@yahoo.com
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New GLOBE Countries in the Region |
Congo Joins GLOBE!
Please welcome the Republic of Congo as the 108th country to join GLOBE! Ambassador Robin Renee Sanders, representing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Madam Rosalie Kama Niamayoua, Minister of Primary and Secondary Education of the Republic of Congo, signed the agreement. More...
Niger Joins GLOBE!
Please welcome Niger as the 109th country to join GLOBE! On 11 August 2005, H.E. Oumarou Hamani, Minister of Basic Education in Niger, and U.S. Ambassador, Gail Dennise Mathieu, signed the GLOBE agreement. Students in Niger join more than 15,000 schools with over 26,000 GLOBE teachers in countries worldwide participating in the GLOBE Program. More...
Ethiopia Joins GLOBE!
Please welcome Ethiopia, the 110th country to join GLOBE! On 24 August 2005, U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Aurelia E. Brazeal and Ethiopia's Vice Minister of Education Ato Dereje Terefe signed the bilateral GLOBE agreement at the Institute for Curriculum Development and Research. More...
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Upcoming Regional Workshops |
Niamey, Niger: 21-25 November 2005. The workshop will be conducted in French.
Kampala, Uganda: January 2006. The workshop will be conducted in English. The exact dates for the workshop in Uganda will be finalized soon. Please keep posted for these exciting opportunities!
Both trainings will contain components regarding the Next Generation GLOBE as well as the Toolkits that have been developed (GLOBE Learning Community Resource Guide and Higher Education Resource Guide) to assist efforts associated with establishing GLOBE Learning Communities and building GLOBE School Networks. The GLOBE Program Office contact for both workshops is Dr. Rebecca Boger.
Chief Scientist Report: Field Campaigns and Satellite Mission Update
Dr. Peggy LeMone, GLOBE Chief Scientist |
There are many exciting events occurring in the GLOBE Community!
Contrail Count-a-thon
In recognition of Earth Science Week this year, the GLOBE Program and NASA invite you to join in a scientific exploration on Thursday, 13 October 2005, to observe the sky over your area and report on the presence or absence of contrails. Teachers, students, and anyone interested in helping to develop a better understanding of Earth are welcome to participate. More...
NASA Satellites CALIPSO and CloudSat Ready to Join A-Train
NASA satellites CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation) and CloudSat are scheduled for launch on 26 October, 2005 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California, USA. The satellites will join two other NASA satellites, Aqua and Aura, plus the French satellite PARASOL, to complete the "A-train" of five polar-orbiting missions designed to study Earth's atmosphere, hydrologic cycle and radiation budget. The scientists from the two missions will look to GLOBE students to provide ground-based data on clouds, precipitation, temperature and aerosols. This information will be used to check the accuracy of the instruments on board the satellites. CALIPSO and CloudSat will provide, from space, the first global survey of clouds; featuring aerosol profiles and physical properties with seasonal and geographical variations. Together, these observations will evaluate the way clouds and aerosols are measured and interact in global models, ultimately contributing to improved predictions of weather, climate and the cloud-climate feedback problem. NASA's Earth Observing Satellites will do far more than acquire a three-dimensional portrait of the planet. They will create a wide, detailed, and evolving global mural of Earth's interactive systems. Just as space-borne observations cross many geographic boundaries, the CALIPSO and CloudSat missions would not be possible without their international mix of organizational partners and scientists from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, and the United States. For more information on how your GLOBE students can participate in these missions, contact Dr. Rebecca Boger at rboger@globe.gov or go directly to the mission Web sites listed below.
CALIPSO: http://www-calipso.larc.nasa.gov and http://calipsooutreach.hamptonu.edu
CloudSat: http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu
GLOBE Connections with CALIPSO and CloudSat
GLOBE Students and Satellites Team up
GLOBE Field Campaigns Around the World
The African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis Project (AMMA) provides the opportunity for GLOBE schools to work with scientists to improve our knowledge and understanding of the West African monsoon (WAM). AMMA is motivated by an interest in fundamental scientific issues and by the societal need for improved prediction of the WAM and its impacts on West African nations. Many of the GLOBE measurements support this very important project. Countries involved in AMMA are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. For more information about how to become involved, please contact Dr. Rebecca Boger. The first international conference on AMMA will be held in Dakar 28 November - 4 December, 2005. See http://amma.mediasfrance.org for more information.
GLOBE One is an agricultural field campaign taking place in Black Hawk County, Iowa that has been collecting data since the spring of 2004 from a variety of sources including participating schools, students taking part in GLOBE ONE field trips, automated weather stations, volunteers and specially-organized events. The main focus of the field campaign will transition from data collection to focusing on data analysis during the next couple of months in order to answer research questions posed by both the students and scientists. Visit the campaign Web site at http://www.globe.gov/globeone to learn more about GLOBE ONE.
The GLOBE Urban Phenology Year (GUPY) project was launched recently in 11 cities in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America (Amman and Irbid, Jordan; Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Tokyo, Japan; Manila, Philippines; Bangkok and Korat, Thailand; Jyväskylä, Finland; Dakar, Senegal; as well as New York, NY and Fairbanks, AK, USA). Workshops on the budburst protocol were held and attended by GLOBE teachers and students. The GUPY Project aims to compare budburst data with satellite images across an urbanization gradient.
The Madagascar Malaria Project is an exciting initiative aimed at learning more about malaria and finding ways to educate the community to assist in combating its spread. Madagascar schools, scientists, health department officials, government officials and others have given their support to this project to link GLOBE hydrology and atmospheric data with mosquito larval occurrence and identification. They will be joined by two teachers from Boulder, Colorado, USA, who recently travelled to Madagascar to participate in the project this year. Contact Dr. Rebecca Boger for more information about this project.
In the context of environmental/Earth science education, the issues related to vector-borne malaria can be viewed as a unique opportunity for developing scientist/teacher/student partnerships that attack a real-world problem with the resources that only a widely dispersed network of participants, such as GLOBE students, can provide. Local identification of mosquito breeding/hatching sites is critical because mosquitoes tend to stay within roughly 1 km of their hatching sites. In developing countries, and particularly in Madagascar, it is entirely possible that GLOBE schools in remote locations could provide the only regular source of this type of data. Once the Madagascar pilot study is complete, plans are to expand to the continent of Africa and to other parts of the world.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne parasitic disease that causes more than 300,000,000 acute illnesses and more than one million deaths annually, including the death of one African child every 30 seconds. GLOBE students and teachers in Africa have been involved in research to combat this scourge since shortly after GLOBE was introduced to the world. Beginning as early as 1996, GLOBE schools in Bénin used GLOBE protocols to relate air temperature and precipitation to the number of reported cases of malaria. At that time, these GLOBE students relied entirely on daily manually reported data. This effort, sponsored by the GLOBE program in Bénin, was presented by GLOBE students at the First GLOBE Atmosphere Symposium held in Cotonou, Bénin, in April, 2001. GLOBE PI Dr. David Brooks can answer questions you may have regarding Malaria.
The Thailand Tsunami Study began shortly after the tsunami tragically hit South Asia in December, 2004. Thai GLOBE students are currently working with local scientists to monitor the ecological recovery of some coastal sites that were affected as well as assess changes in marine invertebrate species, water and soil quality, and local atmospheric conditions using GLOBE protocols across all investigation areas - Hydrology, Atmosphere, Land Cover/Biology and Soils. GLOBE Thailand will be holding a second Marine Hydrology Symposium in conjunction with next year's Annual GLOBE Conference 2006 scheduled to be held in Phuket, Thailand. Please note that the side of the island where the conference will be held next year did not experience any damage from the 2004 tsunami.
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New Resources and Tools for Obtaining and Using Free Satellite Imagery |
Free Landsat satellite data that encompasses almost the entire land area of Earth can be downloaded from the University of Maryland's Global Land Cover Facility Web site. These images are ortho-rectified and available in 1990, and 2000 editions (and sometimes 1975), and lend themselves well to use in the GLOBE Land Cover investigation, notably with respect to the new Land Cover Change Detection Protocol. However, the satellite data need to be processed before they can be used for GLOBE. A tutorial (in draft version) entitled "Finding, Importing and Making Subsets of Free Landsat Data" has been developed by Frank Niepold (GLOBE Teacher and Master Trainer, NOAA Climate Education Fellow and member of the Landsat Education Outreach Team at NASA GSFC). The tutorial guides the user through the process of downloading and processing these data and can be accessed here. In addition, developments in the MultiSpec software package have made for a more robust set of capabilities and more straightforward application to GLOBE activities. Details of how to download the latest version of the MultiSpec software are provided in the tutorial.
Another valuable free resource is Google Earth. The tools on this Web site combine satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips. Fly from space to your neighborhood in seconds! Type in an address and zoom right in. Search for schools, parks, and even your GLOBE sites!! Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings. You can also add your own annotations. To download a free version of Google Earth go to http://earth.google.com. In addition, Google Earth is offering educators the opportunity to obtain a free license to Google Earth PRO. For more information, contact Dennis Reinhardt, Google Earth Team Education Initiative.
Also, Earthshots is an e-book of before-and-after Landsat images (1972-present), showing recent environmental events and introducing remote sensing. Earthshots comes from the U.S. Geological Survey's EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. EROS not only supplies GLOBE schools with Landsat images but they are also the world's largest archive of earth science data.
Education Updates
Dr. Sandra Henderson, GLOBE Chief Educator |
Many new educational resources are in development!
The interactive online cloud protocol developed for use by GLOBE trainers as the primary audience, and for GLOBE teachers as the secondary audience, has received positive reviews as a useful refresher tool. It contains information linking the cloud protocol with the five essential features of inquiry put forth by the United States National Research Council and includes suggestions for classroom implementation as well. If you have not had a chance to use this resource, please do so and feel free to contact us with your thoughts and suggestions. Currently, we have two additional protocols (GPS and Digital Maximum/Minimum Temperature) under development using the same interactive format. We anticipate the release of these new resources in the fall of 2005.
In the next few months, you can also expect to see the release of the new Atmosphere Investigation training slides. The slides will be very familiar to those of you who participated in the 2005 Trainer Certification Programs (TCP)! They are based on our professional development (PD) model and reinforce inquiry, classroom implementation, data collection, entry, and analysis, and give step by step instructions for each protocol.
In addition, we have been creating an Elementary GLOBE unit consisting of a collection of books and classroom learning activities for grades K-2. The Elementary GLOBE unit includes five individual modules (books and activities comprise a module). The five topics align with GLOBE Investigation Areas - Earth as a System, Clouds, Soils, Water, and Phenology. All modules are being field tested in K-3 classrooms to ensure age/grade level appropriateness and are scheduled to be released in the spring of 2006.
Look for upcoming announcements regarding all the new resources we have been working on! And, as always, please do not hesitate to contact me directly if you have any questions or concerns: sandrah@globe.gov. It is a pleasure to work with you all and it has been a real treat to meet so many of you over the past two years.
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GLOBE Stars / News Announcements |
We would like to highlight your special GLOBE events as well as any GLOBE activities that your teachers and students would like to share with others. Many times these stories provide ideas and inspiration to other schools, teachers and Partners. Please help us acknowledge these events by writing up your news and sending it to us with photographs of the event. We do not have the manpower to create the entire article of your special event from your notes and comments. You can help us by creating a draft article and submitting it with a few photographs. Please remember that all pictures must have a completed release form in order to be posted on the GLOBE Web site. Click here to download the picture release forms.
Your finished article should be emailed to Becky Boger. Hard copies of completed release forms should be sent to:
GLOBE STARS Photo Release
The GLOBE Program
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO 80307-3000 USA
We would like to bring to your attention some of the stories and news events that have been posted on the GLOBE Web site since the fall 2005 newsletter:
Studies for Academically Talented Students Program and Carolina Biological Supply Company Partner to Aid GLOBE Thailand Tsunami Research Project (06-JUL-2005)
GLOBE Thailand to host Annual GLOBE Conference 2006 GLOBE Thailand is pleased to host the 2006 Annual Conference in Phuket, Thailand from 27 July . 4 August. The Conference is entitled: The New Decade for Global Sustainable Development and will also include a pre-conference symposium on coastal marine resources. More...
TTT in Shimla, India results in 3 new International Master Trainers! A Train-the-Trainer Workshop took place on April 11-19, 2005, at Himachel Pradesh University in Shimla, India. Tucked up in the foothills of the Himalayas, the workshop brought together 50 participants that included teachers, college instructors and researchers from across India with several participants attending from Germany, Nepal, New Zealand, and Thailand. The training team came from India, Thailand, Nepal, and the U.S. The opening ceremony was honored with a visit by the governor of Himachel Pradesh State, His Excellency V.S. Kokje. More...
The Eratosthenes Experiment (07-SEPT-05) Over 100 schools from approximately 30 countries are participating in this project! More...
Language Study Around the World (05-MAY-2005) Please share with us how your teachers are using GLOBE for language study. More...
GLOBE Web site and Partner Administration Page changes
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The GLOBE Program Evaluation for Year 9 is now available on Partner's Corner, under the link, "Program Evaluation". The Year 9 Evaluation was made available in June, 2005, and the 134-page document includes Program Growth, Partner Study, Materials Study and Student Outcomes.
Partner Administration Page changes include a link to all GLOBE Trainers and Master Trainers. This allows you to look up GLOBE Trainers around the world and see what protocols they are trained in. If you need assistance for an upcoming workshop and choose to recruit a trainer from a neighboring country, you can do so through the contact information available at this link. When posting a workshop on the Partner Administration page, you are now prompted to identify who will be conducting the training. This feature allows you to keep a record of the complete history of all your workshops.
During the regional meetings at the Annual GLOBE Conference, the participants shared sources of funding for their national programs. We are currently creating a Funding and Marketing Toolkit to assist you with your fundraising efforts. A component of this toolkit will contain a list of successful funding obtained by our Partners as well as information that can be used when assembling proposals that include GLOBE. Please complete the online survey that will be sent to you in the near future to provide information for this toolkit! Thank you!
We hope that this information is helpful to you as you recruit, train and mentor the GLOBE teachers in your service areas. Please let us know if you would like to see any additional information in future newsletters. We look forward to receiving your feedback and to facilitating your GLOBE efforts!
Best regards,
Teresa Kennedy, Becky Boger and Sheila Yule
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