Innovative Science Curriculum Developed by Maine Audubon and Partners Debuts in Maine Middle Schools

FALMOUTH, Maine, October 29, 2008—Developed by Maine Audubon and several partners, a new innovative science curriculum called EcoScienceWorks is now available to all middle-school students in Maine. The program is currently being used in over 20 classrooms across the state.

Part computer program, part natural discovery, this ecology course provides an engaging way of teaching Maine students about what makes the natural communities in their area tick.

“No one else in the region is doing this, and few in the entire country,” said Kara Wooldrik, Maine Audubon’s environmental education director. “It’s very exciting to have this available to thousands of students across the state.”

SimBiotic Software and EcoScienceWorks, the educational outreach division of the Foundation for Blood Research in Scarborough, initiated the project. Maine Audubon provided input in the development of an interactive computer program where challenging exercises guide students in studying the relationships between wildlife and their habitat.

In one of seven units, for example, students experiment with dividing a block of forest into pieces to study habitat fragmentation effects on wildlife populations. With ties to different elements of Maine’s environment, other units include forest succession in a beaver bog, predator-prey relationships in a tidal pool and the spread of non-native species in lakes.

Maine Audubon also helped develop outdoor labs for the curriculum, which help cement the lessons the students learn in the classroom. “The computer program is an approachable way for students to grasp some very complicated relationships in the environment,” said Wooldrik. “But actually going out in nature teaches them that these are models of reality—it’s not a computer game.”

At the start of this school year, the program was loaded on all laptop computers supplied by the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, available to seventh- and eighth-graders across Maine. Teacher participation in the program is voluntary.

The curriculum has received positive reviews from a group of 30 teachers who tested it in their classes over the last two years.

“This program gives us the opportunity to get kids outside and make meaningful use of their laptops. It’s one of the most unique programs in the world,” said Patricia Mendelson, an eighth-grade science teacher from Philip W. Sugg Middle School in Lisbon Falls, who helped develop and pilot the program. “My students absolutely love it and it has inspired them to explore the outdoors on their own outside of school. That’s when you know you’re doing something right.”

“When I have used the program in my classes, I have seen normally checked-out kids get engaged in the activity,” said Tabby Dionne, a teacher at Brunswick Junior High School. “I especially like how the curriculum makes use of both the virtual reality of computer models and the actual reality of outdoor labs, which gives me and my students an opportunity to compare the two kinds of experiences.”

“If teachers make an investment of time, this is an incredibly powerful tool,” said Wooldrik. “It unlocks the computer’s potential to provide the cutting-edge kind of technology that scientists are using today to study the natural world.”

EcoScienceWorks is a collaborative project of the Foundation for Blood Research/ScienceWorks for ME, Kieve-Wavus Education, Inc./Camp Kieve, Maine Learning Technology Initiative, Maine Audubon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Teacher Education Program, and SimBiotic Software. The project is funded by a National Science Foundation grant.

MAINE AUDUBON works to conserve Maine’s wildlife and wildlife habitat by engaging people of all ages in education, conservation and action. For more than 160 years, Maine Audubon has been connecting people with nature and leading science-based conservation in major projects across the state. An independent affiliate of Audubon’s national organization, Maine Audubon has seven local chapters, 11 nature centers and sanctuaries, and 11,000 members and supporters.

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