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.
Experiential education research at watershed locations and visits to science centers, such as to the San Marcos River (Aquarena) headwaters discovery center, provide exciting experiential learning opportunities for students. Soon to be published research results by H2O project co-director, Andrew Sansom, show experiential education at the headwaters works for students and teachers. Most students’ understanding […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, Meadows Center, Outdoor Education, Rudolph Rosen, STEM
Outdoor education enhanced by use of mobile technology is the focus of a new iPad – iPhone App being developed by programmers atTexasStateUniversity. The App would be used in conjunction with watershed outdoor education at the River Systems Institute’s Aquarena Springs. The App will lead students through a watershed discovery trail on an educational scavenger […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, Meadows Center, Outdoor Education, Rudolph Rosen, STEM, Technology
Rudolph Rosen will give an education technology workshop for K-12 teachers at the Welder Wildlife Foundation on July 19, 2012. Educators will learn ways to utilize mobile technology (smart phones and pads) in the classroom and outdoors. Click here to see more information about the workshop. Contact Liz Bates to register or for more information. […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Outdoor Education, Rudolph Rosen, STEM, TechnologyA major H2O partnership will involve HRI, CGEE, and ICF in developing a world-class Gulf of Mexico teaching and education unit, fully integrated with online resources and use of technology. Educational content for teachers and students will be based on a proven educational model pioneered by CGEE in order to meet standards-based STEM content for […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, Experiential Education, Harte Research Institute, Rudy Rosen, STEM
New videos are being produced featuring the aquatic resources and researchers of Spring Lake, at the headwaters of the San Marcos River. Educational videos will be among new features to be displayed on multi-media screens and on educational touch screens in Discovery Hall at the Texas Rivers Center on the campus of Texas State University. […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, Meadows Center, Rudolph Rosen, STEM, Video, Water EducationStudent experiential education outdoors inTexas’ watersheds can be enhanced by targeted use of mobile devices such as smartphones and pads. Students can access information to augment their outdoors experience or use the devices to store information about the outdoors experience that can be used later in classroom or after-school learning, thus extending the outdoors experience. […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, Meadows Center, Rudolph Rosen, STEM, Technology, Water EducationH2O, the Harte Research Institute and River Systems Institute: Partners in STEM Education and Building Tomorrow’s Conservation-Minded Citizens by Rudolph Rosen, Ph.D. Research Professor, Texas State University, River Systems Institute The Harte Research Institute (HRI) and River Systems Institute (RSI) are cooperators in H2O’s breakthrough K-12 education projects. Both institutions are young major centers of […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudolph Rosen, STEM
The San Marcos Springs give rise to the San Marcos River and are home to several endangered and sensitive species, including wild rice. Researchers at Texas State University are evaluating specific in-stream conditions that favor growth of rice. Computer modeling of micro flows in the river, specific locations of rice, impacts of drought, inputs of sediment, […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, Experiential Education, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM, Technology
The Texas Rivers Center’s Discovery Room for youth and adult water education must serve multiple purposes during Spring Lake peninsula’s restoration period and beyond. Visitor traffic in the Discovery Room has increased since Aquarena was closed and the Discovery Room’s facilities and displays must accommodate, educate, and entertain more visitors than ever before. The Discovery […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, Experiential Education, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM, TechnologyIntegration of Mobile Technology into K-12 Outdoors Experiential Education: Practical Application for H2O (Headwaters to Ocean) by Rudolph Rosen, Ph.D. Research Professor, Texas State University, River Systems Institute For many K-12 teachers, the computer has become a familiar tool. No longer seen as a mysterious “black box” of science and engineering wonder, computers are now […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudolph Rosen, STEM, Technology
A key H2O project partner providing student access toTexas’ gulf bay and estuary educational opportunities is the Aquatic Education Program (AEP) at TAMU-CC’s Center for Coastal Studies. The AEP has been in existence for almost two decades and began as a partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Corpus Christi Ecological Field Office and […]
Ewing Halsell Foundation, Experiential Education, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM, Technology
Restoration of the Spring Lake peninsula at the headwaters of the San Marcos River has dramatically changed the site’s outside creative education-play scenario and access to open spaces for school groups. To maintain and increase the educational school group tours, new programs are being developed, prototyped, and tested with support of the H2O project. Improvements […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, Experiential Education, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM
Youth and Adult Water Science Education for the 21st Century by Rudolph Rosen, Ph.D. Educational exhibits designed for today’s visitors and students rely heavily on technology. Technology enhanced exhibits generate added excitement for visitors and can deliver large amounts of information in a small space, reducing space requirements and overhead costs. They also provide flexibility […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM, Technology
Selected teaching stars from schools in theCorpus Christiarea will be featured in new comprehensive teacher training videos and curricula onTexas’ bays and estuaries. Production of video and curricula will be through the highly-acclaimed “Teaching with the Stars” project of the Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education, Texas State University, supported by the Ewing Halsell […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM, Video
H2O and the River Systems Institute recently submitted a proposal to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Gulf of Mexico Program Office for a grant under EPA’s Gulf of Mexico Regional Partnerships Grants Program. The proposed $305,000 project will provide experiential bay, estuary and freshwater education activities and service learning opportunities for middle school […]
Aquatic Education, Ewing Halsell Foundation, H2O, Harte Research Institute, Meadows Center, Rudy Rosen, STEM