Compilation of Online Learning Resources

Local Resources

• Creek Connections Website - Teacher Resources, Classroom
• Resources, Loaner Modules (activities available online), links by topic 
• Module activities that don’t require having the module and that are COVID-friendly
• Creek Connections - Weekly Themed, Daily Creature Questions for Students
• Creek Connections YouTube Channel 
• Creek Connections & iNaturalist - how-to presentation
• PBS Tools for Anti-Racist Teaching - Will Tolliver, Allegheny graduate and Creeker, involved in production of these 4 episodes and is a panelist on the final episode regarding our youngest learners.
• Creek Connections - Summer Watershed Program Materials
• Allegheny County Conservation District - Watersheds - tons of Allegheny County-specific information as well as plenty of general watershed health information including macroinvertebrates!
• Allegheny County Park Rangers - Parks at Home
• Keith Piccard, GVSU, Allendale, MI public schools (a Creek Connections participating teacher!) - open Google Doc of Daily Science Posts for students with do at-home experiments
• Keith’s daughter, Isabella’s video on how to sample macroinvertebrates
• How To Videos for the RAIL Project - Keith Piccard. Click here for the data spreadsheets for Pigeon Creek & Pigeon River. Click here for RAIL project information.
• Does it Fart? Read aloud by scientists coordinated by Keith Piccard, GVSU. Does It Fart: The Definitive Guide to Animal Flatulence by Dr. Danni Rabaioti and Dr. Nick Carruso. The first episode is Keith explaining the whole project, and how he organized it so that scientists from all over the globe each are doing one episode. In each episode, they explain the type of research that they do and then read a chapter of the book.
• Dr. Emily Ricotta, Allegheny grad & former Creeker, currently working at National Institutes of Health in Infectious Diseases available for online talk/questions (emily.ricotta@nih.gov) and/or follow her on Twitter (@Iplaywithgerms). Dr. Ricotta created two presentations (so far) and they are full of information and personal stories:

• Outbreak Response (any grade)
• Lessons Learned - Career path to Epidemiology (HS)

• Sara Salisbury, Allegheny grad & former Creeker, currently pursuing Ph.D. studying environmental education at Middle Tennessee State University is available for online talk/questions/lessons ss2cc@mtmail.mtsu.edu. Sara specializes in using local greenspaces like lawns and yards to teach.
• April Claus, Allegheny grad & former leader of the QV Creekers, is available for online (LIVE ANIMALS) herp programs. Contact her at nature@zoominternet.net . There is a fee for her programming.
• Phipps Conservatory virtual environmental film series.
• Asbury Woods (Erie PA) - Virtual Visit
• Carnegie Museum of Natural History - Resources for Teachers
• Westmoreland Land Trust - educational videos for participating Westmoreland County School districts - For your school district to participate, a letter of support from your superintendent is required. Once the WLT receives that letter, teachers may request a workshop for their class(es).
• Pittsburgh’s Invasive Plants - Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy
• Tree Pittsburgh videos

Pennsylvania Resources

• PA Association of Environmental Educators - Teaching EE at Home - compilation of resources
• PA Fish & Boat Commission - fish, aquatic macros, reptiles & amphibians, aquatic macros ID key (the one we use at creekside)
  PA Trout-in-the-Classroom
• PA Game Commission - mammals & birds, Wildlife on Wifi
• PA State Parks - PA Geology (including maps)
• STROUD Water Research Center in eastern PA has lots of virtual learning resources including WikiWatershed and a Runoff Simulation… and videos of aquatic macros to use for learning and ID practice.

• Potter County Conservation District Trout Habitat and Parts of a Stream video from (6 ½ minute video showing riffles, runs, and pools and how they relate to life in the creek) Additional Environmental Education videos from PCCD

National Resources

• High Desert Museum - Dam it! Beavers and Us - interactive exhibit
• Concord Consortium has a series of virtual lessons to explore the “why” we monitor our streams with the driving questions of “How healthy is our stream for freshwater organisms and how do our actions on land potentially impact the stream and the organisms that live in it?”
• Paleontological Research Institution/Museum of the Earth - Earth at Home  Virtual Field Experiences    Teacher Friendly Guide to Climate Change   Science in the Virtual Pub
• Online Teaching should be different!     https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/9-ways-online-teaching/
• Cacapon Institute Potomac Highlands Watershed School - virtual stream sampling and education tool divided into elementary, middle and high school levels of learning
• iNaturalist (Teacher’s Guide to iNaturalist) Creek Connections How To Presentation - a great way to get your students OUTSIDE and looking at/identifying living things. Take your cell phone outside and try this! It’s been a great tool to get kids outside.  :)
• Izaak Walton League Aquatic Macroinvertebrate ID Key
• National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) - Environmental Education at Home
• NAAEE - North American Association for Environmental Education

Join EEPro - online professional development community for EE professionals

• USGS Streamer - Trace your stream to its headwaters or follow it downstream. Also available as a mobile site. Besides tracing your stream/river upstream or downstream, you can also create a trace report that shows lots of detailed information about the path that your waterway takes (cities, miles covered, states, etc.).

• Webinar: Nature as Inspiration and Transformation: An Intro to Nature Poetry - recording now online
• NOAA - LOTS of information, data, maps (check out the blue menu on the left) as well as an entire category dedicated to education
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology (birds) - Lots of info about birds as well as Citizen Science projects
• Project Learning Tree - In Your Own Backyard activities
• WHOA! That’s a HUGE LIST of online AMAZING EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES! Started as a Google form but is now an ever-growing website.
• A friend put together an online list that includes science and more… Education while physical distancing
• NSTA and Citizen Science through SciStarter
• NSTA - National Science Teaching Association - NSTA Daily Do - Coronavirus information in Why Do We All Have to Stay at Home
• Purdue University - Nature of Teaching - Activities on 3 topics: Wildlife, Food Waste, and Health & Wellness. Find lesson plans about hellbenders under Wildlife!
• Dr. David Shiffman - Request remote science education - Interdisciplinary marine conservation biology. He also has a great list of shark and marine biology resources to check out.
• WeatherSTEM Scholar - The pay wall has been lifted to allow people to access their extensive online resources.
• Children and Nature Network - Finding Nature: Staying connected to the natural world during COVID-19
• Richard Louv - 10 Nature Activities to Help Get Your Family Through the Coronavirus Pandemic
• National Geographic @ Home - Learning for families and K-12

• NatGeo Explorer Classroom - Daily 2pm eastern broadcasts

• Science News for Students has lots of great things… this particular one is about surface tension and features student-created water striders
• The Field Museum (Chicago) - The Brain Scoop videos
• Young Naturalists (group based in Ohio) has some great introductory videos under the Streams and Creeks heading

LIVE Animal Feeds

• Eagles of Hays (on the SouthSide Slopes of Pittsburgh)
• Peregrine Falcons on the Cathedral of Learning (Pitt campus)
• Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium - live cams, podcast, vet care videos and educational videos
• Monterey Bay Aquarium - information about many animals that are housed in the aquarium as well as links to live cams for 10 different animals and/or habitats.
• Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden Home Safari (LIVE every day)
• Wild Earth safariLIVE (sunrise and sunset ride-alongs LIVE in South Africa)

Videos

• Deep Look videos on YouTube created by PBS - short videos of very small critters shot in ultra HD, including aquatic macros
• Environmental Film Festival - Films available to stream from previous years’ festivals
• The Last Dragons - hellbender video
• Bringing Back the Brooks film and Brook Trout model how-to
• Environmental Films for younger audiences
• Teacher generated Trout in the Classroom video to connect with her students and others
• Trout Habitat and Parts of a Stream video from Potter County Conservation District (6 ½ minute video showing riffles, runs, and pools and how they relate to life in the creek)

Do you have suggestions to share with other Creek Connections teachers? Please send to Wendy or Laura and we will add. You could also start your own Google Doc or publicly shareable document and share that with us!