STEM Education is Key to Understanding Connections Between People, Watersheds and Texas’ Economy
Ensuring adequate supplies of clean water for Texas’ economic growth, agriculture, and environment will be the defining natural resource issue of the 21st Century. Nowhere is this challenge more acute than South and Central Texas. But the public lacks understanding of watersheds and the interconnections between people who live in a watershed, their water usage and the health of headwater springs, streams, rivers, bays, estuaries and the ocean. Well-informed citizens are needed to assure that future decisions affecting water use and watersheds are sound and sustain Texans and the Texas economy. H2O will help meet this challenge in an unprecedented effort to engage young Texans in a learning process that will prepare them to be informed and constructive participants in future decisions as citizens, voters, and water users.
H2O is an inquiry-based STEM environmental educational experience that uses advanced digital interactive learning opportunities designed around the theme of “Headwaters to Ocean” as well as hands-on outdoor education opportunities designed to complement and leverage existing programs.
Features include innovative curricula, materials, and delivery methods that will use emerging web-based and mobile technologies coupled with time-tested hands-on in-the-watershed experiences for participants in a networked array of schools and education organizations.
Develop programs that foster sound thinking and use new technologies to maintain the attention of today’s students and engage enough people of appropriate ages to ensure Texas’ citizens will make informed choices.
Build upon, link and network successful and progressive educational programs, schools, projects and organizations that can lend to watershed education throughout the project area.
Create outdoor opportunities that further watershed education and add value to existing programs through hands-on field experiences and application of new mobile technologies to aid learning.
Develop and fund technology-based watershed discovery centers that will house advanced educational facilities to uniquely demonstrate the linkages between people and the watershed, from headwater to ocean.
Key features of H2O are the development of educational activities that foster critical thinking and use of advanced technologies to maintain the attention of today’s students. While one of the most exciting features of this approach is integration of technology into outdoor hands-on learning about watersheds, H2O also will employ an indoor learning component at […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM
The Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education, in partnership with H2O and funded by a grant from the Ewing Halsell Foundation, is focusing on the oyster as Mother Nature’s water treatment plant in our bays and estuaries. Oysters filter sediments and other matter from the water of bays and estuaries, keeping the water clean. […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM
A teacher workshop supported through H2O and the Texas Stream Team was held in July in Corpus Christi. During the training, Texas Stream Team instructed seventeen teachers in core water quality and bacteria monitoring. This took place at the Texas A&M Corpus Christi campus and was coordinated by the H2O Project. The majority of attendees […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM, Teaching
In addition to basic learning about watersheds and the role of people in protecting water resources, H2O is being designed by science educators to help young students better understand the world around them and inspire them to pursue careers in science, technology, mathematics and engineering. These are the so-called STEM subjects that have been the […]
Aquatic Science, Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM
The Harte Research Institute and River Systems Institute recently submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Integrated Water Quality Program for a grant under USDA’s Integrated Research, Education, and Extension Competitive Grants Program. The USDA expects to issue a single grant, under the nationwide grant program. The proposed $2.5 million USDA project […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudolph Rosen, STEM, water
Fulfillment Report to Ewing Halsell Foundation was Recently Issued by H2O Project Partners In May 2010 the Ewing Halsell Foundation granted funds to the Harte Research Institute and River Systems Institute to devise a novel experiential, technology enhanced education program focused on water and watersheds, from the headwaters to the ocean. A project report and […]
Aquatic Education, Aquatic Science, Environment, Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Outdoor Education, Rudolph Rosen, STEM, Teacher Training, Water Education, Water Technology
H2O cooperator Richard Boehm, Ph.D., Director of the Grosvenor Center, often talks of the educational value of video and other instruction focused on teaching teachers. One of the best ways to use video in instruction, according to Dr. Boehm, is to have superstar teachers appearing in the videos, along with real classes conducting real activities. […]
Aquatic Education, Rudy Rosen, STEM, Video, Water Education
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is the largest continuing nation-wide assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas. Assessments are conducted periodically in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history (http://scim.ag/NAEP-2009). The most recent report found that 12% of first year college students had […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM
Headwaters to Ocean partner River Systems Institute (RSI) is currently reviewing plans developed by Lake | Flato for a new visitors and discovery center. Lake | Flato is a national leader in the master planning and design of visitor centers with over a dozen projects completed at locations throughout the country. The design process starts […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM, Water Education
H2O staff and supporters toured facilities designed and built by firms interested in providing services on the H2O project. These visits included extensive on-site discussions with educators, display design specialists and facilities managers as well as a general tour and evaluation of facilities and the firms doing the design and construction. The goal of the […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM
Filming to start next school year — Fall 2011 The Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education, in partnership with H2O, is poised to start filming a new segment of “Teaching with the Stars.” This innovative new video and web based program will extend current educational programs into the outdoors. Video and educational programming will […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM, Video
The first teacher workshop to be supported through a new partnership between H2O and the Texas Stream Team will be held in July in Corpus Christi. This one day hands-on instruction to be held outside in the Oso Bay watershed will cover water quality sampling, outreach resources for students, and analysis of watershed information. Data […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudolph Rosen, STEM
Teachers are enthusiastic about outdoor hands-on experiential learning, but need more opportunities to learn how to integrate such learning into state mandated teaching requirements. The Texas Stream Team and H2O have teamed up to provide just this training. This has created a strong program that solidifies a unique and productive educational alliance between H2O and […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM
Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education partnership with H2O takes watershed education into the classroom Expanding the National Geographic Society’s 23-year State Alliance teacher training program is a new video on watershed education produced by the Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education in partnership with H2O. The video is part of the successful […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM
“All buildings of the old theme park at the site of the spring will be removed by the Army Corps of Engineers,” said Ron Coley, Director of the university-run Aquarena Education Center. The restoration project is expected to be complete by 2012, but the popular site will continue to be open to the public for […]
Rudy Rosen, Science Center