HabitatNet: Objectives

Project Director: Dan Bisaccio

EMAIL: HabitatNet@SHS.MV.Com

How humans relate with the natural world has deep cultural foundations. Throughout the history of all civilizations, our relationship with nature has given us art, music, verse, mathematics, and science. Today our global imperative is to understand the implications of our interdependence with nature.

HabitatNet was developed and authored by the project director and is currently a Toyota Motor Inc. and National Science Teachers Association environmental science Tapestry Grant Awardee. The goal of HabitatNet is to enable teachers and students (1) to establish permanent biodiversity monitoring projects around the globe and (2) use telecommunications, via e-mail and world wide web sites, to communicate investigations, findings, and questions regarding biodiversity issues and management.

Using the Smithsonian Institute's Man and Biosphere Permanent Biodiversity protocol and other activities and resources written by the project director, teachers and students are invited to develop permanent plots at sites nearby their home schools. Teachers may obtain a free copy of HabitatNet's resources, data forms, instructions, and suggested activities by contacting the project director (Dan Bissacio) at:

EMAIL: HabitatNet@SHS.MV.Com
FAX: (603)673-0318 Phone: (603)673-9940
Mail: D. Bisaccio, Science Coordinator, Souhegan High School, PO BOX 1152, Amherst, NH 03031

Currently (August, 1996), students and their teachers are developing permanent biodiversity monitoring plots in each of the following areas:

• New Hampshire
• Louisiana
• Maine
• El Eden Ecological Reserve: Quintana Roo, Mexico
• Blue Mountains National Park: Jamaica, West Indies

The pedagogical focus of this project is to put into practice the recommendations from the AAAS, NSTA, and numerous state education departments call for restructuring science education for the 21st Century. In short, the project director's hope is for students to learn scientific habits of mind while conducting research that contributes to our species understanding of the interdependence between all species and their habitat. Knowledge, in terms of this project, is therefore defined as a verb. Students who derive meaning through their own field investigations versus passively accepting knowledge as unproblematic givens, will truly be the more knowledgeable students.