Cathy Isom tells you about the new online tools designed to beef up your learning experience in the field and on the farm. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Beef Checkoff Education Webpage
For the past couple of years, the American Farm Bureau Foundation has partnered with the Beef Checkoff offering beef education resources. A-F-B Foundation Executive Director Julie Tesch says now a new webpage will be added.
Tesch
It’s called “On The Farm,” an in the field beef learning experience, and the great thing is there’s a video on there showing our participants from all across the country, but then, there’s free resources for anybody to use. We have two new online games there and activity sheets, lesson plans, the whole nine yards.
Tesch said it’s designed especially for teachers who don’t have a lot of experience with agriculture.
because we want to expose them to agriculture from our viewpoint, in an accurate way, and to show them how to integrate agriculture in their classrooms, and science classrooms especially in high school.
She describes what the kids will learn when they play the two online games on the website.
In one of them, they’re learning about beef cattle, they’re learning about rate of gain, they’re learning about pasturing and how much land a heifer or steer needs to be raised, so they’re using critical math skills, critical thinking skills. And then another game, they’re learning about nutrition of beef, and learning about the environment and how we’re good stewards of the land, so those are really meant for third through fifth graders.
There are also E-Readers, Family Guides, and lesson plans. However, the material can be “amped up” to higher grades. Tesch said the Foundation is hoping to work with more commodity groups in a similar fashion in the future.
To learn more, go to agfoundation.org/on-the-farm.
From: Beef Checkoff
Beef Checkoff Updates Educational Resources
The beef checkoff has launched an updated beef resources web page dedicated to sharing nationally focused beef-education tools with teachers, volunteers, farmers and ranchers.
The site features a new video highlighting the checkoff-funded 2016 On the Farm STEM event and its impact on district- and university-level STEM coordinators.
“We are excited to debut this online educational resource featuring professional development events for science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers, educators and coordinators who are looking for real-world applications of STEM concepts,” said Julie Tesch, executive director of the American Farm Bureau Foundation, a contractor to the beef checkoff.
Educators who are interested in professional development events in 2017 can find information on the application process online.
For more information about your beef checkoff investment, visit MyBeefCheckoff.com.