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Alder Creek Community Forest embeds GLOBE in “Story of Your Place” curriculum

Jun 13, 2020

Landcover is a protocol used as part of the Story of Your Place curriculum — Landcover is a protocol used as part
of the Story of Your Place curriculum.

Alder Creek Community Forest located in Douglas County, Oregon is dedicated to serving their community’s educational and community needs. This outdoor learning site offers an outdoor education pavilion and 3.5 miles of signed trails, a perfect setting for hands-on, place based learning. Alder Creek has multiple partnerships to support learning including a partnership with GLOBE.

The centerpiece of Alder Creek’s offerings is the Story of Your Place curriculum, a statewide geography education curriculum that utilizes an inquiry based learning approach. GLOBE is embedded in this curriculum as teachers use GLOBE to answer one of the key guiding questions of the curriculum: What are the physical and biological characteristics of this place? Students use the GLOBE protocols of land cover, min/max air temperature and tree height to help answer this question. Educators can integrate other protocols that make sense for their study sites.

Director Jim Proctor says that offering teachers a contextualized approach to using GLOBE helps make GLOBE more relevant and meaningful. The GLOBE data collected helps learners tell the story of their place.

(Above photo courtesy of Alder Creek Community Forest)