EDUCATION FORUM

Chad Jordan (right) explains outreach resources to a booth visitor.
Greg Richter shares creative ideas from ChloroFilms.
Martha Kirouac, Rachel Vourlas, and Mike Kerkman present interactive activities from the Huntington.
Jeremy Pritchard offers tips on teaching evolution.

Plant Biology 2009
ASPB Education Booth Visitors and Presenters Share the Aloha Spirit Through Education Outreach

The ASPB Education Booth in Honolulu brought together a diverse and exciting array of education initiatives and resources for the plant biology community. Sponsored by both the Education Committee and the Education Foundation and organized by Chad Jordan (North Carolina State University), the booth proved yet again to be a focal point of the annual meeting exhibit hall space and provided a forum for sharing new and innovative educational ideas. This year the committee collected information on booth visitors using name tag scanner technology and found that numerous visitors from more than 85 institutions and organizations interacted at the booth’s multiple displays.

The booth featured interactive exhibits from the two winners of the highly competitive 2009 ASPB Education Booth Competition. Martha Kirouac, Mike Kerkman, and Rachel Vourlas from the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, presented an interactive exhibit titled “Real Plants, Real Tools, Real Science.” The exhibit was a scaled version of a nationally recognized outreach effort developed by Huntington in which elementary and middle school students use real scientific tools to examine plant features while investigating a case of plant theft. Booth visitors used different instruments to examine nectar sugar content, pollen and stomatal morphology, and soil leachate mineral concentrations from four different plants in an effort to solve the case for themselves, and learned how similar outreach approaches could be developed for use at different educational levels.

Daniel Cosgrove, Marcia Buanafina, and Gregory Richter presented a dynamic display on Using YouTube and Animoto to “Engage Students in Plant Biology Classes.” The booth featured videos submitted to the first ChloroFilms contest, which was sponsored in part by the ASPB Education Foundation Grant Awards Program (GAP). Visitors viewed videos on a wide range of botanical topics, and learned how different video production technologies can be used to create eye-catching and informative learning tools for their students. Booth visitors also received information on the next ChloroFilms contest and how they can enter their video creations, as well as the opportunity to provide Cosgrove and colleagues with ideas for new video topics to be featured on the ChloroFilms’ YouTube channel.

Jeremy Pritchard (University of Birmingham, UK), invited presenter and chair of the Education Committee for the Society for Experimental Biology, was on hand to discuss resources and strategies for teaching evolution. Jeremy showcased online resources that included a computer-based exercise that examines how the random processes of evolution can produce complex adaptations. He also provided booth visitors with popular handouts including rulers and USB flash drives packed with evolution teaching resources and activities for the classroom.

Education Committee Chair Jane Ellis (Presbyterian College) joined committee members Erin Dolan (Virginia Tech), John Cushman (University of Nevada), and Larry Griffing (Texas A&M) to talk with visitors about the displays and numerous education materials developed by the committee and the Education Foundation. This year many of ASPB’s popular educational print resources—including a handout on the 12 Principles of Plant Biology, the “Genes in Your Genes” and “Plants in Your Pants” worksheets, a “How to Be a Plant Detective” interview activity, and a new worksheet developed by former committee chair Mary Williams (ASPB) on the evolution of major plant groups—were pre-assembled into packets for easy dissemination. Committee members also handed out countless bookmarks on the 12 Principles, as well as informative baseball cards on DNA, genomics, and biotechnology that were developed by Peggy Lemaux (University of California, Berkeley) through a GAP-funded project. Information was also made available to college and university faculty on how to become involved as mentors in the Botanical Society of America’s Planting Science program, which is sponsored in part by ASPB.

Visitors got hands-on experience with two easy-to-use microscopy tools. Introduced at the 2008 annual meeting, visitors used a handheld digital microscope connected to a laptop computer to get an up-close look at plant morphology and plant-based materials including fabrics and paper, and learned how this technology can be incorporated into classroom teaching. Visitors also assembled inexpensive 5× hand lens necklaces that can be used by younger students to examine the many fascinating features of plants in their surroundings.

For information about the 2010 Education Booth Competition or other education outreach activities in development for the next ASPB annual meeting in Montreal, please contact Katie Engen.

Chad Jordan