Creech: Hello,  I am Karen Creech, Educator-on- Loan with NC Department of Public Instruction.

R. Brown McAllister: Hi!,  I am Beth Hamilton...Cabarrus County Schools.  I am the "official" copy and paste girl for the transcript!

Technology Center: Terry and Dian from the Cabarrus County School Technology Department here.

NCCAT: Hello, I'm Stephen Sorrell, Educator-on- Loan  with the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Susan Lovelace: Hello Bethel School!  Did you watch the estuary live trip last week?

Bethel School: No, I couldn't get in.

NCDPI: Hello, Susan.

Susan Lovelace: Good afternoon and welcome to the Estuary Live town meeting from Beaufort Middle School, Carteret Co.

Creech: Will you have students that will participate with you from Beaufort Middle?

Susan Lovelace: We just had one, Maya, on a few minutes ago, but the lunch bell rang.

Susan Lovelace: Three 8th graders and one sixth grader from Beaufort Middle School led field trips for Estuary Live 2000.

Susan Lovelace: One day while filming for the Waters of Life video Bill Lovin and I shared how we would like to bring students to the field live.

Susan Lovelace: The more we talked the more possible it sounded.

Susan Lovelace: The estuary is my topic.  The technology is all Bill.

Creech: A great combination, I know Bill's work

Janet McLendon: Janet and the students who participated in the project will be stopping by for a few minutes during the next hour.

NCCAT: We have several groups who go down to the coast.

R. Brown McAllister: R. Brown did the Estuary last year.  Didn't work out this year due to EOG's! We hope to participate next year!

Susan Lovelace: I am sorry about EOG’s.  We did a quick survey when we set the date and found the best dates.

Susan Lovelace: Unfortunately, we lost a few schools, then later EOG’s were moved into our time slot!

R. Brown McAllister: Just FYI - ISS might be a little delayed with questions...they are having firewall problems.

Susan Lovelace: We had experienced the problems with chat/video and thought we had gotten around them.

Susan Lovelace: I talked to Alisa Chapman earlier today about it, asked her to keep it in the front of her mind.

Susan Lovelace: I would like to try to find a way, process for teachers to scale the wall for brief periods of time in the future.

Susan Lovelace: We will be doing Masonboro Island in September; need to solve the problem.

R. Brown McAllister: Any suggestions for how to do this?

Susan Lovelace: It sounds like one that you work with all of the time.

R. Brown McAllister: It is with the folks I have talked with.

Susan Lovelace: Do you think they would be amenable to flipping the switch for a few hours for special occasions?

NCDPI: Glenn Gurley: I feel that could cause trouble if something would happen...

Technology Center: That is our concern as well.

Technology Center: We have never turned off the firewall in the past because it will affect all the schools.

Janet McLendon: Sounds like we need to schedule and coordinate ahead of time.  That's a possibility.  The techs in Carteret County are very supportive.

Susan Lovelace: I guess, as a parent and field trip leader, I wonder if we are playing too safe.

NCCAT: Amen about "playing too safe, Susan!"

NCDPI: Glenn Gurley: Yes timing is the key there!  We scheduled a Town Meeting during a test and disappointed many folks... I think it was the Reed Gold Mine and it was a 4th grade test.

Susan Lovelace: How do other cooperate type organizations solve the problem?

Susan Lovelace: How do universities in NC solve this problem?

Bethel School: How do you handle the firewall, Barb?

Susan Lovelace: Is there a prevalent problem with lurkers and hackers?

Susan Lovelace: Several teachers from NC and other states hooked up to the phone and dialed in through modems.

R. Brown McAllister: That's what we are doing right now.  It was the only way we could get through!

Susan Lovelace: Good for you.  I think if teachers practiced ahead of time they could plan on a few solutions to solve the problem.

R. Brown McAllister: From Barb - I would like for Town Meetings to be aligned with State Curriculum

Susan Lovelace: We learn something new every field trip. What are you learning to do to make the trip a more educationally relevant and rich learning experience?

Janet McLendon: How about back in the classroom?  What suggestions do you have about he project?

Janet McLendon: Students from Beaufort Middle School have a suggestion. They said they would talk more during the field trip.

Susan Lovelace: Are these field trips useful?

Janet McLendon: Beaufort Middle School students suggest there be more interactions between the field guide and classroom such as experiments.

Susan Lovelace: Is the image good enough to help you see experiments?

Susan Lovelace: There are many organisms that live mostly in estuaries such as salt marsh cordgrass (Spartina alternaflora) and many of the mollusks and echinoderms such as sand dollars, moon snails, sea urchins, and the whelk

Ocracoke School: NC State University does a crab project in Ocracoke every summer - hiring HS students to collect the data on the baby crabs and where they move.

Susan Lovelace: They add significant data to the project.

Susan Lovelace: Dr. Eggleston's project is teaching us about how larval crabs enter and live in the estuary.

Janet McLendon: Is the crab project on the Internet anywhere to look at?  It would be great for other schools to see.

Ocracoke School: The info they bring back each year is very interesting - they have been with us 4-5 years.

Janet McLendon: Amy Sauls is going to join us.

Janet McLendon: Hi, I am Amy  - I am an educator with Susan - I mostly work with school groups.

R. Brown McAllister: Hi, Amy!

Ocracoke School: Hi Amy - from Ocracoke.

Susan Lovelace: Carteret Elementary Schools were some of our most active participants.  I'd hate to lose them next fall.

R. Brown McAllister: This is from Barb....(ISS) I am relaying for her because of the firewall.  They can't get through!

R. Brown McAllister: From Barb....The firewall issue:  We use Instant Messenger (IM) or email to send questions to friends.

Susan Lovelace: Has there been evaluation of the firewalls including the network safety and instructional impact?

R. Brown McAllister: From Barb...Susan there has been no evaluation of firewalls that we know of.

Susan Lovelace: Materials, what could we do better to prepare teachers either in content or technology for field trips?

R. Brown McAllister: Glenn, isn't the Teacher Academy session for Tech II going to show teachers how to video conference?

Creech: Glenn has left, but yes I am sure that they are.

R. Brown McAllister: From Barb...Yes, Tech II will include a model on video conferencing.

Susan Lovelace: These special areas are important to our state in many ways.  They are important to our ecology because they are nursery areas, and many animals and plants begin their lives here.  They are important to our ecosystem.

Ocracoke School: And as in Ocracoke's area - an economic factor.

Janet McLendon: Absolutely.

Susan Lovelace: I'll bet the Ocracoke students would like to compare data with those up on the Albemarle Sound.

R. Brown McAllister: We would like to welcome East Iredell Middle School!

Susan Lovelace: Welcome, East Iredell

Susan Lovelace: Any questions?

Susan Lovelace: We would rather stick a few logos on the Real Player than charge.

Creech: Maybe you should talk with Instructional Services here at DPI and maybe they could help sponsor the workshops for teachers.

Susan Lovelace: That would be a terrific way to do the workshops.  We (Criss Crissman and our non-profit, CERF) have a proposal into AOL, but we won't know about it until June.

Susan Lovelace: Do you think this would d be taken more seriously if school systems had to pay for the service?

Creech: Maybe, but they have to pay for so many things, I hope that you'll be able to offer it to them free, that is a real plus for getting computers and Internet access into the school when you have a valuable resource like the Estuary Project.

Janet McLendon: There are 2 million acres of estuary in NC - which is the 3rd largest in the continental US.

Susan Lovelace: We are used to being in front of the camera with live critters.

Susan Lovelace: If anyone eats flounder, shrimp, crabs and most fish in NC they needed the estuary for their dinner.

Janet McLendon: There are 4 areas set aside by the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve - the Masonboro Island site, Rachel Carson site, Zeke's island site, and Currituck Banks

Janet McLendon: So North Carolina is a very important area for seafood (2 million acres).

R. Brown McAllister: When we participated last year, it was really slow.  So, a faster pace would certainly help.

Susan Lovelace: Perhaps the adventure is lost over the Internet.

Susan Lovelace: This year, the majority of the video streaming went through the NC Department of Public Instruction or Metalab, I think it was quicker.

Janet McLendon: I like it when the students talked the entire time.

Janet McLendon: During one session there was a boat trip that took up most of the session.

Janet McLendon: The kids liked it when you stayed in one place and show the egrets and let us hear them speak.

R. Brown McAllister: From Barb..."Why are estuarine areas often called the "ocean's nursery?"

Susan Lovelace: Estuaries are shallow areas that provide great hiding places for many organisms, especially baby and young organisms.  It also provides warmer waters, as shallow water tends to become warmer from the sun.

Susan Lovelace: In learning about NC, do students and teachers have the opportunity to get out and see the state, take field trips?

Susan Lovelace: The crab project is one of the first to recognize that HS students can help collect good data for large research projects.

Susan Lovelace: Of course it takes great cooperation from students and teachers!

Ocracoke School: They are paid and also learn responsibility as well as the scientific aspect.

Janet McLendon: Ocracoke, that is so neat - love to see it!

Ocracoke School: They have a great collector they invented and the kids pull it out of the water and wash it out and send the sample on to NC State.

Creech: What do you see as being the biggest change that the estuary has gone through since you have being taking students on field trips?

Susan Lovelace: I have lived in Carteret County for 21 years.  I have taken students out into the water all of that time.  I do see differences.

Susan Lovelace: The same plants and animals are here, but in places where people go, there are not near as many.

R. Brown McAllister: Has participation in the field trips increased?

Janet McLendon: Yes, I certainly think that as more people are aware, there will be more visitations to the estuaries.

Susan Lovelace: Some species, like birds, seem to adapt.  We even have some birds that should be nesting on sandy beaches that are now nesting on gravel rooftops.

Susan Lovelace: We are broadcasting from Beaufort Middle School.

Susan Lovelace: What is the biggest seafood moneymaker?

Susan Lovelace: Many people might answer oysters, but much of our harvest has declined.

Creech: What are your dreams for the future of the Estuary Project?

Susan Lovelace: For this project, we would like to visit two estuaries a year and bring them to students through the Internet.

Susan Lovelace: We would like to hold several teacher workshops to get input for improving the project.

R. Brown McAllister: We have about three minutes left with Susan.  Does anyone have any final thoughts or questions?

Creech: Who funds the Estuary Project?

Janet McLendon: Anyone who wants to donate $$$.

Bethel School: I think this would knock a lot of schools out...no funds.

R. Brown McAllister: It's time to wrap it up.  We would like to thank Susan so much for spending her valuable time with us!  Any final words, Susan?

Bethel School: We have enjoyed this Susan and thanks again.

Susan Lovelace: Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Creech: Thanks,  Susan for taking time to share with us about the Estuary Project.  We know that the transcript from this Town Meeting can also be a valuable resource for teachers.

Janet McLendon: Make sure if you would like to discuss this further to contact Susan and myself through our contact information on www.ncnerr.org

Susan Lovelace: Thanks for joining us today.

R. Brown McAllister: Thanks everyone for joining us in this Town Meeting! Good-bye everyone!