Kingsburg High School, Kingsburg, CA, USA

15 June 1998

*Page designed and written by Kingsburg High School GLOBE students.

Kingsburg High School students, under the direction of GLOBE lead teacher Peggy Foletta, have been collecting GLOBE data since its inception last year. Because of KHS's early involvement as well as the initiative taken by the KHS GLOBE team collecting data all summer, weekends, and holidays, Kingsburg High School has collected more data than any other GLOBE school in the world!

Last fall GLOBE student Steven Eckgren wrote a song for GLOBE and subsequently the award-winning KHS Jazz Choir improvised and recorded it. If your computer has the ability to play "WAV" format sound files, download the chorus' performance (note: this file could take more than five minutes to download with a 14.4 kbps modem). If your computer can't play "WAV" format sound files then mail Steve with the type of computer you have and the type of sound player. In an attempt to integrate the GLOBE Program campus-wide, we also conducted a contest to see who could design the best Kingsburg High School / GLOBE Logo. Thanks to winner Omkar Sran, we now have a "Viking" GLOBE Logo (pictured to the right). Our next step is to paint the design on a sign to place in front of our weather station.

Our Advanced Placement Biology class did a 3-season Merced River water quality study in Yosemite National Park this past year. While there, we couldn't resist the temptation of measuring the diameter of a giant Sequoia. Having forgotten our tree diameter tape, we had to improvise our tree diameter protocol (we don't think the tape would have fit around this tree even if we had remembered to bring it)!

Water quality from the Merced River will be compared to water quality in our local Kings River, where the general biology students seasonally conduct 9 water quality tests while carrying out biometry measurements for GLOBE.

Earlier this year KHS was honored with a visit by GLOBE Chief Scientist, Jim Lawless (center), who assisted student Clint Johns (left), and KHS Principal Linda Clark in taking weather station measurements.

The KHS GLOBE team has tutored GLOBE students in two Kingsburg GLOBE elementary schools: Shirley Esau's 4th grade class from Lincoln School and Steve Hofer's 6th grade class at Roosevelt School. The high school students now have devoted young "pupils" who keep asking their teachers when the high school GLOBE team will make a return visit. Not to worry, this cross-age tutoring has become part of Kingsburg's GLOBE Program!

Mrs. Foletta and other area GLOBE lead teachers, having been given access to California State University Fresno's new educational technology center and funding from the City of Fresno's Water Education Division, worked with GLOBE to put on a local GLOBE training for Central California teachers. Mrs. Foletta (right) shows how close this group was to the perfect pixel size. In January, 32 new GLOBE teachers were trained! Its great to have a strong nucleus of GLOBE teachers in the area to collaborate with!