Discovery Based Secondary School Opportunities for Global Student Collaboration

1. Discovery-Based Secondary School Opportunities: Facilitating Global Student-to-Student, Teacher-to- Scientist Teaching/Learning Objectives: This project tested a creative, nontraditional, unique approach allowing secondary school students, their teachers, and local community college/university faculty and students to engage in collaborative research projects while learning basic science and math skills. Activities in each of 7 classrooms linked together on 3 continents focused on issues of land, water, and pest management in the local setting. With this approach, secondary school faculty / students discovered how important it is to know more than production / consumption facts as an entrepreneur and how important it is to understand the human societies and the land culture from which the product comes in order to produce and market it in a sustainable manner. Simultaneously, students and their teachers at these 7 sites taught and learned from each other. Walt Woolbaugh Manhattan School District, MT Florence Dunkel Montana State University Kim Popham Belgrade School District, MT Leota Haynes American International School, Bamako Belgrade Middle School Project sponsored by USDA CSREES Secondary Education Challenge Grant 2005-2007-Award No. 2005-38414-15679 Malian teachers / students from the American International School of Bamako are out in the city shopping area (a “strip mall”) looking for materials to include in their trunk. One item they selected was the stove shown here. • Benefits/Impacts, unique products: • From Trunks. •  Trunk tasks challenged students / teachers to communicate important aspects of their locale using minimum English. (Malians start English in 7th grade.) •  Trunk preparation helped students reflect on their own local environment. •  Trunk exploration helped students broaden world-views. •  Euro-American students (Belgrade/Manhattan MT) began to learn about Mali, what it is to be material resource poor but culturally wealthy. Northern Cheyenne Americans (Lame Deer MT) learned material poverty on their Reservation was minor compared to material poverty in Malian villages. •  US students/teachers learned USDA-APHIS-PPQ rules exercised at US Customs when trunks entered / left US and quarantine rules of Mali / Mongolia. • Most valuable discoveries happened when cultural guide “explored trunk with students”, e.g., a Malian or their teacher just returned from Mali. •  Trunks became permanent resource for future classes to alter to reflect themselves / their community changes. Neem leaves, flowers outside AISB science classroom, Bamako, Mali Cowpeas in glass petri dishes ready for moisture content testing by American International School of Bamako(AIBS) and Katistudents at ICRISAT (International Research Center in Bamako), prior to neem treatment and bruchid inoculation (country = Mali, continent = Africa). • Benefits/Impacts, unique products: • From initial scientific process: • Belgrade MT students became concerned about water quality when calculating their exploding human population’s needs. • Manhattan MT students visited local farmers, learned seed potato production for Idaho food potatoes was their community’s economic mainstay. • American International School of Bamako (Mali) students (mainly US diplomats’ children) learned most Malians eat cowpeas as their main protein source, but cowpeas, only harvested once a year, are difficult to keep safe from insects who “steal” cowpea protein. • Malian students in Oeulessabougou knew about cowpeas but learned solarization stops insect (bruchid beetle) attack. • Lame Deer MT school students met tribal elders to discuss issues with respect to Northern Cheyenne practices / beliefs about land, water, pest management. •  Manhattan MT students visited local farmers, learned seed potato production for Idaho food potatoes was their community’s economic mainstay. •  American International School of Bamako (Mali) students (mainly US diplomats’ children) learned most Malians eat cowpeas as their main protein source, but cowpeas, only harvested once a year, are difficult to keep safe from insects who “steal” cowpea protein. •  Malian students in Oeulessabougou knew about cowpeas but learned solarization stops insect (bruchid beetle) attack. •  Lame Deer MT school students met tribal elders to discuss issues with respect to Northern Cheyenne practices / beliefs about land, water, pest management. Malian teacher Yacouba Kone showing students in a Northern Cheyenne school some items (the tea ceremony) from the Malian trunk. • Benefits/Impacts, unique products: • From main scientific process: •  Students engaged in solving important agricultural /community issues, discovered by listening to local farmers / scientists and using good scientific practices, they could find useful answers for parents, their community. •  American students in Mali began research collaborations with Malian village students. Their American teachers began collaborations with Malian national (IER) / international (ICRISAT) agricultural researchers. •  American students in US, Mali heard guest lectures, visited scientists in labs. Most important, they began to feel they were collaborators with teachers / scientists on original research. •  Students learned results obtained / analyzed from original research, must be shared with colleagues for scrutiny. •  At Global Project Symposium, Manhattan MT students learned that they / their parents may soon experience the same water quality problems their Belgrade age-mates worried about. • Benefits/Impacts, unique products: • From Teachers teaching in Material–Resource Poor Countries: • Teachers visiting Mali: •  Discovered ways to teach through language barriers •  Experienced classroom conditions in subsistence farmers villages / city schools •  Learned procedures to protect themselves from water- and insect-borne, potentially fatal diseases •  Became amazing cultural guides for students who experience Mali mainly through their teacher’s eyes. In Mali, Belgrade science teacher helps Kati student learn about Montana using her student’s card and, assisted by Montana State University entomologist, introduces to Malian teachers possibility of collaborating on a Mali seed potato project with local Malian potato disease scientist After visits to local farms, Manhattan MT students decided to study the conditions and challenges associated with growing seed potatoes. In Mali, students from Bamako,Oeulessabougou, Kati (shown here), make their presentations at the June 2006 global science symposium simultaneously with Manhattan/Belgrade students linked in video conference to USDA program officers and Montana State University scientist in Washington D.C. Belgrade is the fastest growing community in Montana, and these students are looking into population and water quality issues.