NOAA Planet Stewards – Coming July 2013

SCIENCE TEACHERS WANTED THIS JULY!

We’re very proud to announce the upcoming public launch of Planet Stewards, NOAA’s career pathway badges for high school students.  We will be opening a no-cost training for up to 500 high school science teachers in July 2013.  The training will be conducted fully online over the first three weeks of July.  Work at your own time and pace, supplemented by optional live events.  Earn your NOAA Teacher Badge!

When you’re done, you can bring your students into the platform to earn over 15 NOAA Career Pathway badges, all aligned to NGSS standards.  Up to two professional development credits will be made available through Boise State University for an extra fee of $60 per credit, includes transcript.

If you’d like to be added to the list of participants, please sign up here.

To learn more about the power of quest-based learning, and get a sneak peek at Planet Stewards, check out our video!

Revealing Planet Stewards

As many of you know, I’ve been engaged on our Planet Stewards project in conjunction with NOAA as part of our DML/HASTAC award.  It’s been amazing to be involved in the evolution of Mozilla’s Open Badges initiative, work with the talented experts at NOAA, and gain a better understanding of the need for environmental education in today’s times of Hurricane Sandy and other environmental disasters!

What does it look like to work on Planet Stewards quests and earn Mozilla badges?  Here are early screenshots inside 3D GameLab.  As you see the first screenshot, we currently have 169 quests!  These can be expanded on by individual teachers who have the option to add additional quests to the curriculum.

Freshwater Quests inside 3D GameLab

Quest designer, Lucas Gillispie, focused on creating quests that engage the student as a real-life problem solver of freshwater ecology issues using real-time data.

Planet Stewards Badges: 5 “super-badges” in the NOAA content areas, 15 career-pathway badges, and one Conquerer badge for those rare individuals who master all 20!

Next month I travel to the Climate Literacy Summit, and hope to gain a better understanding of how we can expand this work to better protect our planet and the humans who’d like to enjoy it now and in the future.

New Badges Have Been Released

Planet Stewards has released more badges, and we would like to share them with you!

The first badge is a teacher achievement badge. Teachers earn this by completing quests that teach them how to use the program and how to incorporate it into their classroom.  Our pilot teachers begin their training this week, and will receive this achievement when complete.

Teacher Achievement

The second set of rewards are general achievements. Achievements are small steps along the way, or areas of specialization completed during questing worthy of recognition.  Achievements are not OBI compliant, but are an important part of creating motivation and providing acknowledgement of learning.

General Achievements

 

We would love to hear what you think. Feel free to leave a comment or question.

The Teachers Have Been Selected!

Congratulations to the teaches that have been accepted to participate in the pilot launch of Planet Stewards!

All together there were 25 High School teachers accepted from all over the United States. Chris Haskell, the instructional designers, and the NOAA content experts have been working hard to develop the pilot launch curriculum, and are excited to share it. The teachers will be training the first two weeks of November and in January they will be introducing it to their classes. In order to congratulate the teachers properly I have listed below the name, school, city, and state of the 25 accepted participants.

Kelly McAllister	Riverside Virtual	Riverside	CA
Sarah Cox	Woodbine Community School	Woodbine	IA
Jennifer Creasy	Charlottesville High School	Charlottesville	VA
Norman Alford	West Broward High school	Pembroke Pines	Fl
Latha Janet	Eau Claire High School	Columbia	SC
Lucia K. Jacobs	Keenan High School	Columbia	SC
Lisa Triolo	Columbia High School	Nampa	ID
Krista Dunn	Lake Taylor High School	Norfolk	VA
Stephen Coleman	High Tech High	Quincy	WA
Timothy Vaillancourt	Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School	Marlborough	MA
Pamela Rainard	Smithfield High School	Smithfield	VA
Susan Twidle	Howell High School	Farmingdale	NJ
Birgit Musheno	Desert Vista High School	Phoenix	AZ
Montessa Young	Idaho Digital Learning Academy and Oregon Virtual Education District	Nyssa	OR
Catherine Silver	Winnacunnet High School	Hampton	NH
Julie Stratton	Cape May County Technical School	Cape May Court House	NJ
Shaundrie Jones	John L. Leflore	Mobile	AL
Samantha Kimmel	Florida Virtual School	Kissimmee	FL
Amanda Peretich	Calvert High School	Prince Frederick	MD
Vic Akemann	Stevens Point Area Senior High (SPASH)	Stevens Point	WI
Catherine Flippen	Mount Vernon Presbyterian School	Atlanta	CA
Bryan Hirschman	Essex High School	Essex	VT
Brian Olivera	Kodiak Rural Schools	Ouzinkie	AK
Melanie Joseph	Florida Virtual School	Orlando	FL
Sara Chaves Beam	Chesapeake Bay Governor’s School for Marine and Environmental Science	Glenns	VA

Again, congratulations Teachers! We are excited to have you be a part of Planet Stewards.

Presenting: Planet Stewards Badge Designs

Planet Stewards is excited to present to you the badge designs for the NOAA career pathways.  We would like to thank Eva Delgado for all of her amazing work. The badges turned out beautiful.

In the five areas of science covered by NOAA’s Planet Stewards badges, there are 3 career badges available for a student to choose from. Once mastering the required quests they earn the “super badge” which is the gold badge on the far right. This is the ultimate goal for a student, and the badge shows it with its striking design.

Take a look at the badges here. We are so happy to be sharing this with you and would love to hear what you think. Feel free to leave us a comment or question below.

Coastal Manager Badge Preview

Planet Stewards is making progress on the Coastal Management Career Badge, a minor badge of the NOAA freshwater sciences. The quests that have recently been designed were based off a Freshwater Quest Roadmap made by Lucas Gillispie. As you can see, the quests that are being designed for the Costal Management Career Badge include Introduction to Estuaries, Rising Tides and Shifting Currents, Coming To An Estuary Near You, Coastal Manager: Tools of the Trade, Data Quest: Measuring Water Quality, Stewardship of Estuaries, Hurricanes and Estuaries, and Culminating Activity/Project. Lucas has provided a short YouTube clip giving a brief tour of some of the quests learners will explore as they pursue their Coastal Manager badge.

Go to the Badges & Quests tab on the Planet Stewards website for more information.

Call for Teachers!!

Planet Stewards is looking for 20 high school teachers from around the United States to participate in the first pilot launch of Planet Stewards in the spring of 2013. This is a project of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and 3D GameLab to provide high school students the opportunity to earn up to 15 NOAA-certified career pathway badges. The student’s use 3D GameLab, a quest-based learning platform, to complete quests using NOAA educational materials. They can earn experience points, awards, achievements, and badges, as they engage in an active, hands-on, inquiry-based learning program aligned with the new K-12 Science Education Framework.

A student participating in Planet Stewards will be able to take on the identity of a Space Weather Scientist, Hurricane Hunter, Storm Chaser, Fisheries Biologist, Coral Reef Ecologist, Marine Biologist, Coastal Manager, Hydrologist, Ecologist, Cartographer, Physical Oceanographer, Vulcanologist, Climate Modeler, Paleoclimatologist, and Climate Scientist.

Teachers will be required to participate in a two-week asynchronous training program in the first two weeks of November in order to prepare their class for questing in the fallowing spring. Students will be able to quest all semester long, or a portion of the semester, as determined by each teacher. Participating teachers will receive a small stipend, and also receive a NOAA Certified Teacher Badge. If you are interested and would like more information, see http://planetstewards.wordpress.com/call-for-teachers/.

Don’t miss out! This is going to be a great experience for both teachers and students! Applications are due September 15^th 2012.
Post by: Kodi Sims