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Impact Report

For plan Expanded 4-H & School Enrichment(Santa Fe County)
Date October 15, 2008, 7:32 pm
For Objective Medium-term Show medium-term objectives
Impact Report In the past couple of years the agriculture agents have worked with the Santa Fe Children's Water Festival. The goal of the water festival is to deliver water education programs to 4th grade students throughout the Santa Fe area by means of an interactive field trip as well as follow up evaluations. As a result of their work with this group the Ag agents developed a water education workshop to present during the festival. The workshop focused on water as it relates to agriculture. The information was delivered in a Jeopardy style game where students competed on teams using responders to answer questions. Students then reviewed the correct answers and explanations for these answers. Over two days the agents reached over 200 4th grade students and their teachers. As a result of the game the agents pursued further funding to expand youth water education. A grant proposal was submitted to the Southern Regional Water Coordination Project. The grant was awarded and the project, now entitled "Water Ripples" received $12,000 to develop a youth water curriculum. The agents will work collaboratively with New Mexico State University, Louisiana State University, and University of Kentucky to develop both a computer based as well as a non-computer based curriculum to be delivered to students throughout the 13 state southern region. The Water Ripples project proposes to develop youth water education materials designed for interactive ‘fun-time’ learning. These materials will include interactive educational games for age groups ranging 4th to 6th grade. Materials will be designed for standalone instruction as a packaged presentation for young audiences. Popular game formats such as Jeopardy, Trivial Pursuit, etc, will be used to facilitate learning about water. Games will introduce students to various concepts that can be adopted for a particular setting, e.g. rural or urban. Playing the games will help students understand relationships of cause and effect in protecting water resources. Each response, correct or incorrect, will provide additional information to enhance knowledge gained. The ultimate benefits of these program materials will be increased understanding of water quality protection and conservation. A minimum of two separate interactive games with three variations of each game (e.g. agriculture, home and landscape, and general water knowledge) will be developed. A total of six games will be completed. Each game will have hardcopy and electronic versions to facilitate various learning situations. Electronic formats will be designed for LED projection, much the same as large screen television. This capability will allow broader viewing for group team interaction. Approximately two hours of instructional ‘game playing’ will be available from the entire package. Work on this project is nearing completion and should be ready to pilot in select schools by the end of the year. Kid & Kows & More is an educational program designed to teach youth about where food and fiber comes from and for them to understand the importance of agriculture to their local communities. This program was once again offered to 500 fourth grade students from the Santa Fe area elementary schools as well as to 300 fourth grade students from the southern Santa Fe County and Torrance County elementary schools. The Agents secured funding to offset the cost of transporting the youth to the Santa Fe County Fair Grounds and the Moriarty Civic Center where the educational programs were conducted. The youth were rotated through the various stations where they learned about vegetables production and marketing, field crops, ranching, water quality and conservation, bees and apple production, and the dairy and sheep industry. The program information was presented by representatives from various organizations including, Cooperative Extension Service, New Mexico Beef Council, New Mexico Apple Council, Edgewood Soil and Water Conservation District, Farm to Table, Santa Fe County 4-H Council, and the Southwest Dairy Producers. The agents also noticed a slight decrease in the number of participants in the past couple of years, particularly at the Santa Fe site. To try and remedy this decline the agents re-organized the program over the last couple of years offering longer workshops and incorporating a lunch break. The new schedule alleviated transportation issues and offered the students more time to spend at each workshop. The presenters had more time to deliver their information. The agents also added a new workshop to both sites. This year students had the opportunity to learn about the sheep industry in New Mexico as they watched a real sheep being sheared. The students and teachers responded positively to the change and participation increased from the previous years. This year 510 youth and over 50 adults from 10 different schools were reached at the Santa Fe site. 291 youth from 3 different schools were reached at the Moriarty site.