HABITATNET: A Global Biodiversity Monitoring Project
Project Director: Dan Bisaccio
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 email and world wide web sites, to communicate investigations, findings, and questions regarding biodiversity issues and management.
Using the Smithsonian Institute Man and Biosphere Permanent Biodiversity’s 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 Bisaccio. (Click here for contacting Information.)
Currently (August,1996), students and their teachers are developing permanent biodiversity monitoring plots in each of the following areas:
New Hampshire
El Eden Ecological Reserve: Quintana Roo, Mexico
Louisiana
Blue Mountains National Park: Jamaica, West Indies
Maine
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.
Project Personnel:
Dan Bisaccio, HabitatNet Project Director
Melissa Chapman, Project Staff
Contact:
Daniel J. Bisaccio
Director of Science Education
Brown University
Box 1938, 340 Brook Street
Providence, RI 02912
Phone
401 863-3428
Fax
401 863-1276
E-mail
habitatnet@sprise.com
Daniel_Bisaccio@Brown.edu
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HabitatNet is copyrighted and meant only to be used by teachers for student use. All materials, activities, and data sheets are to be used by teachers for their students only.
Copyright © 1999 HabitatNet, Souhegan High School, Amherst, NH 03031