Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA)

Location:
United States

Description:
The Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA), a partnership between the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), the Center for Educational Technologies (CET) at Wheeling Jesuit University, through funding from NASAís Earth Science Enterprise, is an exciting and innovative professional development program.

ESSEA will support universities, colleges, and science education organizations in offering K-12 Earth system science (ESS) online graduate courses that have been developed within the CET at Wheeling Jesuit University for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. The Earth system science courses use an innovative instructional design model, are delivered over the Internet, and feature student-centered, knowledge-building virtual communities. Successful proposers will participate in an intensive four-day training workshop to learn how to deliver the courses.

The ESS courses feature student-centered, knowledge-building communities in which groups of teacher/participants engage in problem solving, model building, and classroom activity design. A master teacher and/or an Earth system scientist , who act as guides and mentors throughout the 16-week courses, moderate participants. Participants' expectations are set through the use of rubrics for individual and group work as they learn new ESS content, become knowledgeable about new resources, develop confidence in the use of technology, and design new classroom activities.

IGES will award three-year grants to entities with unique and innovative proposals to facilitate and offer the Earth system science online courses developed and tested by CET. Each grant will be in the range of a total of $45,000 over a three-year period. Plans are to issue new grants in early 2000, late 2000, and in 2001. A copy of the full proposal and guidelines is available at the ESSEA Web site or by mail at the address below.

URL:
http://www.cet.edu/essea

Organization:
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Center for Educational Technologies (CET), Wheeling Jesuit University
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Contact:
Claudia Dauksys, ESSEA Program Associate, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, 2111 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201; Phone: (703) 875-8634; Fax: (703) 875-8635; Email: essea@strategies.org

Education Level:
Kindergarten-Grade 4
Grades 5-8
Grades 9-12
Undergraduate

Subject:
Earth System Science

Program type:
Course
Curriculum Development/Support
Educational Technology
Faculty Enhancement
Teacher Training (In-service)
Teacher Training (Pre-service)
 
 

Date Added to teachearth.com:
5/1/00