Celebrate National Biodiversity TeachIn, February 12th

EarthEcho is proud to present, in conjunction with Elgin High School (Elgin, Illinois), an ocean-themed day for the 2016 National Biodiversity Teach-In. We are bringing together speakers and scientists from across the globe for a day of free webinars for your classroom. Each speaker is working to protect our Water Planet and preserve the biodiversity found in our oceans and beyond.

Each ocean-focused webinar is free and will bring an expert scientist into your classroom for an engaging and interactive 45-minute presentation. Philippe Cousteau Jr. will be presenting over the lunch hour (12pm - 1pm CST), information on his presentation can be found here.

Each presentation requires registration! If you are interested in seeing one or more of the presentations please register for each individually.

The schedule of presenters is below and all times are in Central Standard Time. Click on each presentation for more information and a registration link.

The Northern Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone, Alan Lewitus - 8am - 9am CST
Whales of New England, Lindsay Hirt - 9am - 10am CST
NASA’s Big Mission to Study Earth, Laura Faye Tenenbaum - 10am - 11am CST
Shark Biology and Conservation, David Shiffman - 11am - 12pm CST
Oceans As A Resource, Philippe Cousteau - 12pm - 1pm CST
Crown of Thorns & Corals, Alex Dempsey - 1pm - 2pm CST
National Marine Sanctuaries: Sentinels of a Changing Ocean, Jacqueline Laverdure - 2pm - 3pm CST
Plastic, Ahoy! Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Patricia Newman - 3pm - 4pm CST

Pre-webinar

We have asked our webinar presenters to provide us with materials that they think will support you as the classroom teacher to prepare your students. These resources may be websites, videos, books, or research articles. Based on feed back from last year’s Teach In we will also be putting together vocabulary lists for each webinar. As these resources become available we organize them by date and time of the presentation.

Classroom set up- on the day of the webinar

You will need a computer with internet access, a projector, a screen and we also recommend speakers.

One week prior to the webinar you will be sent a link and a password- keep this information handy for the day of the webinar. If you can not find the link it most likely is in your spam folder- look for something from Elgin High School and/or OmNoiva.

Log-in is pretty easy from the link but does require a couple of steps so go ahead and make sure you can log in the day before the webinar. You will not be able to get into the virtual room until the appointed time (you can log in 2 or 3 minutes early)

If you have trouble logging in DURING webinar time please contact OmNovia directly. https://support.omnovia.com/support/home

If you have trouble loggin in BEFORE webinar- email us debbieperryman@u-46.org so that we can make sure you are loaded into our system correctly. If we can help you- we will get OmNovia’s support team to help you.

Asking Questions:

Each presenter has been given the freedom to organize their webinar as they wish. Some presenters will not begin asking questions until near the end of the presentation. Some presenters will decide to answer your questions as they go. No matter what the presenter decides asking the questions is simple. When you watch the webinar the initial screen is split into 3 sections- you will see the presenter live- you will see the presentation- and you will see the text box.

To ask a question simply type the questions into the space provided and press send. It is just like sending a text message.

There are other options like making the speaker and presentation full screen. I think you will find OmNovia very easy to use. Here is an overview of the video- keep in mind that it is a sales video but it does let you know what they offer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TMw4kxzIRk

You can also see the webinars we offered last year on our National Biodiversity Teach In YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEHKTWTRsija-EK0q0qYv9w Just go to our “play list” link.

Additional Ideas:

1. Create Cornell Notes for the session and then have your students participate in a Socratic session to go back and pick out the big ideas.

2. If you have access to multiple white boards in your room- clean them off and during the session record the big ideas or define vocabulary to foster discussion after the session.