From Green Right Now Reports

Digital media resources from Ken Burns’ acclaimed documentary series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, including on-demand video, lessons plans, student activities, and historical archives, are now available through the PBS Teachers web portal.

The site includes preK-12 educational services and a searchable library of more than 9,000 local and national standards-based instructional resources.

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By Tom Kessler

ADDISON, Texas (ADDISONGREEN.INFO) — When you have the word “green” in your school name, it’s probably safe to assume that environmental awareness is top of mind. That’s exactly the case at Addison’s Greenhill School, a coeducational private day school with more than 1,200 students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12.

Over the last four years, the school’s Green Team — composed of parents and faculty — has led a series of sustainability initiatives that are truly putting the green in Greenhill. School leaders have looked for ways to make the school a more sustainable place and to promote eco-friendly habits in the students. >> Read the full story

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From Green Right Now Reports

EarthEcho International, a nonprofit environmental education and youth leadership organization working to restore and protect our water planet, today announced a program that aims to involve millions of U.S. middle and high school students.

The Water Planet Challenge program, announced during the Clinton Global Initiative fifth annual meeting in New York, intends to foster tomorrow’s conservation leaders. EarthEcho says the program will fill a critical need in America’s classrooms, where it sees a lack unified ocean and fresh water systems education and service-learning content.

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By John DeFore
Green Right Now

Somewhere in between the sleep-away camps, beach excursions and baseball games of summer, kids and parents alike generally see the appeal of the sand-free floors and refrigerated air of a good museum. Institutions across the country know this is a great time to squeeze some education into kid-friendly, entertaining exhibitions; here’s a list of some of the best nature-oriented attractions for vacationers who’ve felt a bit too much heat this month.

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From Green Right Now Reports

Twenty-two teams of U.S. middle school students have been named state finalists in the inaugural Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge, in which the students were asked to “go green” by creating and implementing environmental change in their local communities. Two national winning teams and one grand prize-winning team will be chosen and announced on May 18.

More than 2,000 students participated in the Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge and state finalist projects covered topics such as e-waste recycling, ecosystem restoration and water conservation. The Siemens Foundation partnered with Discovery Education and National Science Teachers Association on the competition, which will expand to elementary schools in 2009 and to high schools in 2010.

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By Barbara Kessler and Harriet Blake
Green Right Now

As Earth Day approaches, one of the most significant things you can do is to help a child celebrate nature and embrace a greener lifestyle. Here are ten ideas for creating a fun and meaningful Earth Day celebration.

1 – Picnic (with local food)

Get outdoors and enjoy a snack with the squirrels and ants. To really get the most out of this, take your favorite kid(s) to the market in preparation and let them search out local healthy foods. Even young kids can participate, choosing the apples, veggies and cheeses they want to include. So introduce them to the farmer’s market or local foods section of your neighborhood grocery. Look for organic and lower your impact by using reusable dinnerware and plates, or biodegradable paper plates.

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By Sommer Saadi
Green Right Now

Want to spend the summer restoring a wildlife habitat on the Dolores River? There is a camp for that. Or would you prefer learning first-hand how to cultivate a thriving organic farm? There is a camp for that, too.

With more than 5,000 overnight camps and more than 1,400 teen tours across the nation, there is a camp to suit the interests of almost every child. But we’re not talking basic glue noodles to paper, play tether ball and call-it-a-day sort of camps. We’re talking traveling the world, adapting to foreign cultures, nurturing wildlife and embracing conservation.

And the best part is these summer options are incorporating green practices and green teachings into every aspect of their programs.

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By John DeFore
Green Right Now

Google has a way of attracting attention, whether it’s by upending cell phone paradigms with an open-source platform or frightening publishers with its quest to digitize every book ever written. Now environmental groups have reason to hope one of the search giant’s projects will raise eco-consciousness among people who spend more time playing with the latest techie fad than they do reading conservationist pamphlets.

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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Audubon has announced that its ongoing Pennies for the Planet project will support three specific conservation efforts in 2009.

The projects are:

• Project Puffin and the Seabird Restoration Program off the Maine coast. The Puffins have been restored to the island after once being driven off by hunters, but they must be protected as scientists learn more about how to save seabirds.

• Four Holes Swamp, an ancient swamp that supports otters, owls and rare plants in South Carolina as well as cypress trees that are hundreds of years old. Alligators and rare bats live in this soggy setting. Parts of the swamp are protected, but more land could be preserved.

• Wyoming’s “sagebrush sea,” an endangered habitat for pygmy rabbits, sage-grouse and pronghorns. Scientists are working to reclaim some of this area, to help save the native species, like the pronghorns, from being pushed aside by development and agriculture.

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By Melissa Segrest
Green Right Now

They’ve sold the candy bars. They’ve sold the wrapping paper. Perhaps they’ve even sold cookie dough (not healthy) or had car washes (not good during droughts). The problem with typical school fund-raisers is that the kids just end up selling more stuff – at a time when the world could benefit from a little less stuff.

Thus, a green wave of school fund-raising efforts has washed across the country, and companies are springing up to meet that demand. Eco-friendly firms will provide everything from stainless steel water bottles to fair-trade T-shirts, energy-efficient light bulbs to recycled wrapping paper as alternative, Earth-friendly ways of raising money.

No small number of them were launched by environmentally sensitive parents who didn’t like what they saw their kids selling to friends and family.

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By Kelly Rondeau

You’ve heard of No Child Left Behind. Now comes a new program with serious educational goals, but a different approach: No Child Left Inside proposes to re-invigorate environmental education by tapping into kids’ innate curiosity about nature. And communities across America are embracing the fresh, bottom-up concept by holding No Child Left Inside events.

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By Barbara Kessler
Worms. These lower invertebrates have gotten such a bad rap. No one really gives them a thought, except that organic gardeners know they’ve got good soil when they see plenty of worms at work aerating and fertilizing it.
For the uninitiated, worms can be your best friend when it comes to reducing household [...]

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