Tweeters,

Greetings from Washington, DC. I miss the Northwest more than I can say.

My dissertation work is about to go to its data gathering stage. Below is a description of the activity. It is an interesting version of watching birds. If you are interested, or you know somebody who is interested, I would be very interested and grateful.

We now live in Arlington, Virginia. I did a fair amount of birding at Theodore Rosevelt Island where I got to review my fall warblers. (I first started birding in 1954 in Syracuse New York)

Jim Rosso
jlrosso at aol.com
Arlington, Virginia

A request for volunteers.

Jim Rosso has reached the data gathering stage of his dissertation work for his Ed.D at Pepperdine University. He needs to have 20 educators/participants from around the country that can donate about 1.5 hours for each of three weeks from February 2 to the 22. Participants will do activities and share thoughts in an online newsgroup with other participants, during whatever time frame is convenient for them each week.

This project will provide each participant an opportunity to engage in a unique science education activity in an online asynchronous community. Jim Rosso can also provide a letter verifying involvement and completion of this activity for whom it may concern.

The participants need to be connected to the field of education. They can be currently working teachers, people about to become teachers, retired teachers, teachers participating in graduate studies, or people who are involved in education. They need to have no particular skills aside from the ability to send and receive email and have access to the Internet. The newsgroup location, password and procedures will be provided.

The project, The Questioning Project (http://birdcentral.net/behavior.htm), involves a science activity that is an effort to increase visual awareness in field zoology by employing a simple observation and question process. Participants create a set of questions in response to a photo of a bird, and then viewing a live bird.

Further background information is available at http://birdcentral.net/behavior.htm, but this description will summarize the activities of the three weeks.
Week One ? Participants briefly familiarize themselves with http://birdcentral.net/index. They will pick a photo that intrigues them and create a series of questions in response to the photo. There is no right or wrong way of creating the questions.
They will post the questions on the newsgroup in addition to a short narrative about how the questions came to be. They will also respond to other postings. (Instructions will be provided on how to work with the Newsgroup.)
Week Two ? They will determine an opportunity to watch a live bird and post what the encounter will be (or anticipated to be) on the newsgroup. They will watch the bird and create a series of questions in response to the observation. Again there are no rules or expectations on what this encounter looks like or how the questions should be. Participants then post the questions and a brief narrative on the process of creating the questions and respond to other postings.
Week Three ? Participants respond to any remaining questions in the newsgroup and fill out a questionnaire and return it to Jim Rosso.