Tools for Outreach Presentations

We present resources we have constructed and culled from the internet that can be used in computing outreach visits in K–12 classrooms, especially high schools. We have used such tools at about 100 schools, reaching several thousand students, and achieving positive attitudinal responses in surveys of several hundred of these students

NROC Coordination and Program Delivery

The primary goal of the Natural Resources Outreach Coalition (NROC) program is to provide education and outreach to communities in the NH Coastal Watersheds that are dealing with the effects of growth, and looking for ways to conserve open spaces and natural resources. Program objectives to meet this goal include: 1. NROC and client communities determine natural resource concerns of the communities. 2. NROC and client communities gather community information about these concerns 3. NROC develops and client communities host community presentations about natural resource-based planning. 4. Communities receive follow up technical and educational assistance as requested. In 2005, NROC worked with three new client communities (New Durham, Wakefield and Deerfield) to achieve the objectives outlined above. All three communities received NROC’s Dealing with Growth educational presentation, customized for each community, followed by a series of follow-up meetings in each community to address issues raised in the presentation and community concerns about growth and natural resources. At the same time, NROC continued to work with three previous NROC communities (Chester, Strafford and Candia). NROC worked with a total of six communities during the funding period. Our experiences with the NROC program led us to the following conclusions: a) All the program objectives were met b) The NROC approach of an initial education presentation for all boards and the public, followed by an intensive program of follow-up assistance over several months, continues to be a very effective strategy for mobilizing and motivating community leaders and volunteers to move forward and take action to protect priority land and water resources. The follow-up assistance and related activities are key to the success of the NROC program in a community. NROC’s revised follow-up assistance procedure, first implemented at the end of 2004, has been very successful, resulting in higher levels of volunteer recruitment and retention. This has also resulted in stronger and more focused follow-up programs developed by the participants c) Providing continued assistance to previous NROC communities has been valuable in helping those communities continue to move forward, and develop a strong and informed base of public support for natural resource-based planning. d) Having funds available for community projects has helped to motivate communities to take action on issues they have prioritized

Municipal Conservation Outreach and Technical Assistance, Taylor, J

The New Hampshire Estuaries project awarded a grant of $24,700 to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests in May of 2002 for municipal conservation outreach and technical assistance in the area of municipal funds for permanent land conservation. SPNHF, working in close partnership with the Center for Land Conservation Assistance, conducted research into available mechanisms and funding sources for municipal conservation efforts. A publication summarizing the available options and providing information and case studies from a variety of New Hampshire towns was produced. Saving Special Places – Community Funding for Land Conservation, was distributed in December of 2002, just in time to assist towns seeking new municipal funding sources at the 2003 town meeting season. SPNHF/CLCA also provided a series of educational workshops on the topic of municipal fund raising for permanent land conservation. Eight workshops were held in the New Hampshire estuaries area, and seven were presented to at statewide events. Over 400 people attended the workshops. SPNHF/CLCA also provided technical assistance to twenty-four of the communities in the estuaries area over the period of the grant. Elements of the project were publicized in a wide range of print media in both statewide and estuary-area outlets.The education and outreach effort was quite successful. The number of towns applying land use change land monies to their conservation funds increased, as did the percent of the fund applied. The towns in the estuaries area that had the advantage of the new publication just as they were going into town meeting season with bond proposals in 2003 passed their bonds at a rate of 76$18,660,000 of new money available for conservation projects in those towns. Past the term of the grant, additional towns will be voting on increasing the amount of money from the Land Use Change Tax going to their conservation funds in 2004. Eight more towns in the estuaries area are considering open space bond proposals for the 2004 town meeting season, for a possible total of $19,600,000 in new funds for permanent land conservation. The coming challenge for the New Hampshire land conservation community will be to encourage the towns with these new sources of money to invest it wisely. Properties need to be selected according to guidelines that reflect a mix of natural resource values and local interests. Projects need to be conducted in a professional manner to insure long-term viability and excellent stewardship

NHEP Buffer Outreach 2005 - 2006

The purpose of the buffer outreach project is to provide education, assistance, and tools to the coastal watershed towns so that they will understand the importance of buffers for water quality and quantity, the need to enhance their own town’s buffer protections, and how to move forward with enacting new buffer protection measures. These activities helped implement several Action Plans from the Management Plan. NHEP staff developed a buffer presentation, a marketing brochure for the presentation, and a webpage devoted to buffer information. One presentation was given at a public hearing in New Durham. NHEP funded several buffer related projects including UNH Complex System Research Center’s buffer characterization and buffer mapper, Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission’s buffer outreach program in Candia and Deerfield, and buffer ordinance development in New Durham through the Community Technical Assistance Program

Natural Resources Outreach Coalition: Coordination and Program Delivery

The Natural Resources Outreach Coalition (NROC) is a multi-organizational initiative providing technical and educational assistance to communities in New Hampshire’s coastal watersheds dealing with the effects of growth. The NROC program offered to communities includes an initial educational public presentation, Dealing with Growth, followed by a series of follow-up meetings to help the community develop an action-oriented work plan, and provide the technical and educational assistance needed to help the community meet its goals

2004 Coastal Conservation Outreach

The Seacoast Land Trust mission is to actively promote and effect the protection and stewardship of open lands in the Seacoast. Since our founding in 1998, programs and outings have been an essential part of the organizations activities. Through our programs we strive to raise the awareness about the importance of land conservation and land stewardship. The grant funding allowed us to offer a wide range of programs and activities and to focus on the importance of protection to our coastal habitats and wetland resources. The programs involved participants with a wide range of ages and interests and included concerned citizens, municipal and conservation leaders, students, and members of civic organizations. Highlights of these activities, their turnout and comments from participants are presented below. In all of these programs Seacoast Land Trust presented information on its current land protection programs and land conservation success stories as part of the activities. A presentation of mapping of the lands within the SLT service area, previously funded by the New Hampshire Estuaries Project and the New Hampshire Coastal Program was also displayed at each event. We ended up adding three additional programs and activities above the ten activities/programs originally proposed

Unproceedings of the Fourth .Astronomy Conference (.Astronomy 4), Heidelberg, Germany, July 9-11 2012

The goal of the .Astronomy conference series is to bring together astronomers, educators, developers and others interested in using the Internet as a medium for astronomy. Attendance at the event is limited to approximately 50 participants, and days are split into mornings of scheduled talks, followed by 'unconference' afternoons, where sessions are defined by participants during the course of the event. Participants in unconference sessions are discouraged from formal presentations, with discussion, workshop-style formats or informal practical tutorials encouraged. The conference also designates one day as a 'hack day', in which attendees collaborate in groups on day-long projects for presentation the following morning. These hacks are often a way of concentrating effort, learning new skills, and exploring ideas in a practical fashion. The emphasis on informal, focused interaction makes recording proceedings more difficult than for a normal meeting. While the first .Astronomy conference is preserved formally in a book, more recent iterations are not documented. We therefore, in the spirit of .Astronomy, report 'unproceedings' from .Astronomy 4, which was held in Heidelberg in July 2012.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, .Astronomy 4, #dotastr

RISK RESEARCH AND PUBLIC OUTREACH: A TALE OF TWO CULTURES?

Agricultural economists have been challenged in recent years, by voices inside and outside the profession, to evaluate the integrity of the operational bridge between research and extension activities in the land grant system. This essay investigates links between the work of risk researchers and outreach programs. Survey results indicate that (a) a significant number of risk researchers are involved in extension activities; (b) extension economists are less frequently involved in risk research than their colleagues with no extension appointment; (c) full-time extension economists use less sophisticated risk tools in their outreach efforts than used in their research; and (d) all respondents, regardless of appointment, see a need for more applied risk analysis. Major challenges include a lack of financial support to close the data gap and to conduct relevant applied analysis present major communication challenges.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

A collaborative and experiential learning model powered by real-world projects

Information Technology (IT) curricula\u27s strong application component and its focus on user centeredness and team work require that students experience directly real-world projects for real users of IT solutions. Although the merit of this IT educational tenet is universally recognized, delivering collaborative and experiential learning has its challenges. Reaching out to identify projects formulated by actual organizations adds significantly to course preparation. There is a certain level of risk involved with delivering a useful solution while, at the same time, enough room should be allowed for students to experiment with, be wrong about, review, and learn. Challenges pertaining to the real-world aspect of problem-based learning are compounded by managing student teams and assessing their work such that both individual and collective contributions are taken into account. Finally, the quality of the project releases is not the only measure of student learning. Students should be given meaningful opportunities to practice, improve, and demonstrate their communication and interpersonal skills. In this paper we present our experience with two courses in which teams of students worked on real-world projects involving three external partners. We describe how each of the challenges listed above has impacted the course requirements, class instruction, team dynamics, assessment, and learning in these courses. Course assessment and survey data from students are linked to learning outcomes and point to areas where the collaborative and experiential learning model needs improvement