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Camp Internet Teacher Briefing



BackCountry Studies



For the Week of October 18-22



Activities to Make Reservations For

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
This week we host the special live volcano chat with geologists from the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on Tuesday October 19th. The Hawaiian volcano, Kilauea, is still an active volcano and offers us insight into some of the geologic processes that shaped the Channel Islands and the California Backcountry. We will be broadcasting live from the Park Headquarters at the edge of Kilauea with Trail Guide Jay Robinson. Please reserve an hour slot between 1-3pm for this exciting look into the life of an active volcano and how islands and mountains are formed by forces from deep with-in the earth.

Indian Basket Making
We are honored to have expert California Basket Maker Julia Parker from Yosemite National Park online for her first Internet chat activity this week. Her scribe will be Kathy Dimont, an education coordinator from the Park. Julia will share with us the names of the plant materials used in Indian basket making, how the different types of baskets are made, the historical uses for baskets, and news about the current revival in interest in California basket making. Please prepare 4-6 key questions for Julia in advance, and reserve a one hour time to be online between 9 and 11 am on Thursday the 21st.

Professional Development
A teacher's professional development class is also being tentatively planned for your technology literacy development that will focus on GIS skills and on accessing remote telescope imagery via the Internet. Camp staff are being trained by ESRI on GIS applications in the classrooms, and on inputting star coordinates to generate night sky photographs from the Remote access Astronomy Project at UC Santa Barbara. They will the train-the-trainers, and send you back into the classroom with some exciting new tools and skills. San Bernardino area classes will tentatively meet on Tuesday, December 29th at Truman Middle School in Fontana, and Riverside area schools will tentatively meet December 1st at desert Sands Unified School District. Session will run from 1-4pm, with an Open House for teachers district wide following from 4-6pm. Please make arrangements to attend a session and send your reservation to camp@rain.org. We will be able to firm this up with everyone in early November.

Listserv Assignment for Students
As was assigned last week, we continue to ask that you have students post a question to a specific classroom that they have selected from their passport in the Native American or Paleontology sections. Here are the instructions again:

Please have the students use the outposts-l listerv to post a question to another class. You, as the teacher, can refer to the printed list we provided that notes which classes are Islands and which are Backcountry to find a class in your track. Then select a class in your track to write to by looking at the return address on the listserv from one of the other classes previously posted messages. Have the students send them one question taken from their Camp passport and see if they send you back the right answer. This activity should focus on the Native American section of the passport, or the paleontology questions. Check back later in the week and see if they answered you. This is a chance to get the students talking to one another online, sharing information, and challenging each other to learn! If the class doesn't write back in a few days, use that same printed list to give the other teacher a call to alert them the question is on the listserv waiting for their students to answer. We will do this each week for the rest of the month to build bridges between the classrooms in different locations.

For the Week of October 18-22
Social Studies
This week we turn our attention to the California mountain ranges and begin learning about Sierra Backcountry Native Lifeways. Our focus for the first week of mountain lifeways is the Miwok, and specifically the tribal group who lived in Yosemite Valley. The book about Tupi is an introduction to these peoples, and we will now learn in more detail about their homes, trade partners, customs, and natural environment. There are also two Miwok Quizzes online for your students to test their knowledge on.

Reading
Ishi is on our calendar for more reading this week, and we also will have a Miwok story posted in the Storytelling area for you to enjoy.

Science
In geology, there is information about rocks, minerals, islands and geologic forces to read. And of course the very special chat with the Hawaii Volcano experts will enliven the week. You will learn about the volcanoes that shaped the backcountry landscape, and have a chance to ask real life scientists about the volcanic process that they are witnessing right now today in Hawaii. The geology challenge for the week is to gather at least one rock from each students neighborhood and bring it to the classroom to determine if it is sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic.

Halloween Costume Contest
In preparation for next week's activities, the Camp announces it is hosting a Halloween Costume Contest. Students who choose to attend a school costume event dressed as a figure from California history - pirates, Native Americans, gold miners, or ??? - can send us photos of themselves in costume. Every entry receives a prize, with a grand prize of a special book about the Chumash Rainbow Bridge legend. If you can photograph them, send the photo - with name and school on back - to Camp Internet, PO Box 325 Buellton CA 93427. Announcements of winners will take place in early November.