Reprint Courtesy of the Arlington Star-Telegram

River Legacy Center to receive two grants

Arlington, Texas — November 28, 2003

By Neil Strassman
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

The River Legacy Living Science Center is again stepping up its effort to teach science to children. Long recognized as one of the premier natural science education centers in North Texas, the River Legacy facility will receive two grants that could strengthen science learning in Texas schools.

One of the grants will fund science instruction for children in rural Texas, and the other will fund a pilot program to develop a curriculum for teaching reading and science concurrently.
The center already offers schoolchildren hands-on instruction in biological field investigations and classes in bugs, birds and other animals. Students can peer through a microscope to study water or learn about ecological relationships. Professional development workshops for teachers are included.

Now the science center will be able to take its show on the road because of a federal Agriculture Department grant awarded to the Education Service Center Region XI's telecommunications network, which provides a videoconferencing service for students.
The grant provides $45,000 for videoconferencing equipment and an additional $10,000 to develop programs, said Gerri Maglia, a Region XI distance learning specialist. The goal is to improve distance learning -- providing programs and lectures on subjects that rural students might not be able to learn about because of a school district's small size, lack of resources or remote location.

"There are videoconferencing facilities in rural school districts all over the state, but there just aren't enough content providers," Maglia said. Naturalist Stacey Vazquez said the Arlington science center will offer interactive versions of some programs that it has already developed.
"It doesn't replace real experience, but it's the next best thing," Vazquez said. The programs could be about seasonal ecology or animal architects such as beavers or birds that modify their habitats to build homes, or they could involve walking students through the collection and analysis of water samples, Vazquez said.

Other Tarrant County sites participating in the videoconferencing grant include the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Bass Performance Hall, the Fort Worth Nature Center and the Amon Carter Museum. The programs should be available before the end of this school year, Maglia said. The science and history museum will focus on programs involving earth sciences and physical sciences, said Colleen Blair, the museum's director of school services.

The other River Legacy science center grant -- Seeds of Science, Roots of Reading -- is from the National Science Foundation and the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The Arlington center will participate in a pilot program to develop an early-childhood curriculum that integrates reading and science education, said Carolyn Willard, director of the Lawrence Great Explorations in Math and Science program. "There is high interest in teaching science and reading at the same time," Willard said. "If there is a unit on a terrarium, there would be readers accompanying it on snails, soil, plants and other stories."

The teachers' guides for the programs are classroom-tested and reviewed by teachers. Willard said. The River Legacy center will help field-test the study kits and programs, she said.
Eventually, the center might be able to provide workshops for area teachers and day-care providers who can take programs back to schools and possibly to city recreation centers, Vazquez said.

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Copyright 2003 Star-Telegram, Inc.

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