Wetlands and Rainforests and Prairies
Inexpensive shareware and a rainforest screensaver can be obtained at Sylvan...
Links
Tom Snyder Productions, 800-342-0236
listserv@gdarwin.cox.miami.edu
sbourke@avila.fred.deakin.edu.au
Inexpensive shareware and a rainforest screensaver can be obtained at Sylvan.
Rainforest Researchers, CDs published by Tom Snyder Productions, poses two in-depth challenges for teams of student researchers. Students become authentic ecologists and the instructional approach acknowledges that not every student in your classroom will have access to a dedicated computer. Moreover, the tasks cannot be accomplished without cooperation, actually a dynamic in environments. Teacher support materials are excellent and include hands-on work, too. While this software is more expensive than most packages mentioned in this center, it is well worth it. The target age is upper elementary school.
Terrene is an advocacy group for preserving these micro-climates.
The Rainforest Alliance helps people of all ages to understand the role that each one of us plays in biodiversity conservation, and provides both lesson plans and resources.
Prairies, while not as startling at first glance as rainforests, say, cover a huge amound of the earth's lands. At the Bell Museum viewers can actually build a prairie from scratch with plants and animals which must be comptible with that environment. It is a very fun site for lower elementary students.
Virtually the whole country of Costa Rica is an eco-friendly environment. Study the poison dart frog in its rainforest.
And for snakes (2000 species worldwide) look at Snake Tracks.
The newly opened California Academy of Sciences exhibits a four story rainforest with many micro-ecologies. Take-home kits widen the student base.
Annotation
Because such environments are bounded, they serve as fertile study targets.
