Introduction!

Hello!

My name is Anne Lewis and I am the facilitator for this Earth's Explorations online professional development.

When I facilitate a professional development opportunity, I always learn something from the participants. Through this class I want to:

• Improve my understanding of what teachers and out of school program staff need to help students explore the Earth.
• Discover new resources and ideas.
• Learn from the stories and voices that people will share about teaching.

A little about me professionally and personally. I work at the South Dakota Discovery Center as the Special Projects Director. This means I have a lot of varied projects on my plate; everything from overseeing the traveling exhibit program to doing a lot of the IT work. My major responsibility, however, is the environmental education outreach both to teachers and students.

I have my Master's in Natural Science and Environmental Education from Hamline University in St. Paul. I like to trail run (slowly), hike, and kayak. In the winter, I do home improvement projects and read. I like to blog as well, mainly as a way to get my ideas and thoughts out of my head so I can make more sense of them.

I am sharing a picture taken Nov 1, 2014. I went paddling and came upon a beaver dam. This is the downstream side of the dam. I saw other sign of beavers (a slide along the bank, holes in the banks, a few chewed branches with the characteristic point) but no actual beavers. The concern when beaver are present is bacterial contamination of the water.