The report card for the Mississippi River basin. The purpose of this report card is to provide people with information on status and trends of the entire Mississippi basin taken as a whole. The watershed of the Mississippi covers 40 percent of the continental United States. Exploration and development of the region during the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries helped define the character of the United States.

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We had two field trips to the Gulf of Kachchh. One trip was to the Khijadiya Bird Sanctuary near Jamnagar. We visited in the late afternoon and were treated to a nice breeze and a beautiful sunset over the water. The sanctuary used a levee with spillways to impound freshwater to maintain high quality bird habitat during the dry season.

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We stopped in Mumbai in route to Jamnajar workshop, which is the home of the Indian film industry, known as Bollywood. The Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire was filmed there and the grand finale song and dance number 'Jai Ho' was a highlight of the film. Jai Ho was written by A.R. Rahman who won an Oscar for this song. I adapted Jai Ho for the conclusion of the report card workshop. Ruma Chakraborty kindly agreed to sing a few stanzas of this report card version of Jai Ho!

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Field Manual for Water Quality Monitoring in Schools: An Environmental Education Program for Schools, Keith Mitchell & Bill Stapp … I found this to be a very useful book when I started showing kids how to monitor streams. There are some inspirational things in the book, particularly where they talk about all the different places in the world where this approach is being used. Shouldn't Our Grandchildren Know?

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An IAN contingent traveled to Jamnagar, India to conduct a two day workshop to develop an environmental report card for the Gulf of Kachchh (rhymes with touch). Bill Dennison, Heath Kelsey and Jane Hawkey made the trip, and although Simon Costanzo was scheduled to come, his Indian visa didn't arrive in time.

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There are many different forms of education and just as many different ways to categorize different forms of education. We have chosen a fairly simplistic three category scheme; formal education, self-guided education and public education. What we mean by formal education is the education provided through schools and universities. This form of education has historically been with students and teachers in classrooms.

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There are three things that the community needs to be able to say collectively in order to successfully confront an environmental challenge. The community needs to be able to say "We care" about a specific environmental issue, which comes from the heart. The community also needs to be able to "We know" what the right thing to do would be, which comes from the head. Finally, the community needs to be able to say "We can", referring to their ability to institute the appropriate actions.

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Two of Peter Oliver’s favorite words were ‘ praxis ’ and ‘ phronesis ’. These Greek terms were part of the vocabulary of the ancient Greek philosophers and used by Aristotle to describe practical wisdom (phronesis) and thoughtful, practical doing (praxis). They were used within a broader vocabulary to describe various elements of learning and knowledge.

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Healthy Waterways Healthy Catchments is now available for free in PDF format from IAN press. Healthy Waterways Healthy Catchments: Making the connection in South East Queensland, Australia … This 238 pp. book was the fourth in a series of four books produced as part of the Healthy Waterways campaign in Southeast Queensland. It was published in 2005 and summarized the scientific findings from a variety of different projects that were conducted as part of Phase 3 of the Healthy Waterways program.

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Discover the Waterways is now available for free in PDF format from IAN Press. Discover the Waterways of South-East Queensland … This book was the third of a series of four books produced as part of the Healthy Waterways campaign in Southeast Queensland. It was published in 2001 and was intended to provide citizens with enough context to view key ecosystem features from different vantage points around Southeast Queensland.

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