Acadia National Park Receives New Hybrid Learning Grant from National Park Foundation

News Release Day: April 22, 2021

Call: Alanna Sobel, National Park Basis, 207 796-2538

Get in touch with: Jay Elhard, 207 288-8807

BAR HARBOR, ME – Acadia Nationwide Park is a single of 32 parks and park partners to get an Open Outdoor for Young ones Hybrid Mastering grant from the Nationwide Park Foundation (NPF), which performs in partnership with the National Park Service and the park lover local community to ensure that national parks reach their fullest potential and join with as numerous men and women as attainable. Acadia’s grant will support the enhancement of virtual mother nature golf equipment, spouse and children mother nature adventures, and virtual spring industry journeys. A entire listing of grantees can be identified on NPF’s website.

“With assistance from this grant, educators at Acadia and the Schoodic Institute will collaborate on an ambitious sequence of out of doors, place-centered courses,” stated Superintendent Kevin Schneider. “We’re discovering that it can be demanding to build a software that is interactive and participating by a virtual structure. This grant provides us wanted guidance in connecting parks and learners.”

Acadia and Schoodic educators by now have led about 600 digital courses since the final 7 days of September.

With additional than 400 parks across all fifty states and the U.S. territories, the NPS historically hosts extra than 60,000 in-park and distance learning education and learning applications on a yearly basis, serving above 1.8 million students.

Recognizing that the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted how and the place pupils are learning, NPF collaborated with the NPS to aid a software style and design workshop in September 2020 with top specialists in evaluation, digital programming, neighborhood engagement, and countrywide park leadership. The goal being to advise on how NPF and NPS can fulfill the needs of college students, academics, educational institutions, and communities through these unsure instances and how classes acquired can be used in the extensive-time period. The workshop led to the Open up Outdoors for Little ones Hybrid Discovering method, an extension of NPF’s Open Outdoors for Young children Industry Excursion software.

“National parks are America’s biggest lecture rooms, and the National Park Foundation is fully commited to helping learners, academics, and families navigate finding out all through the pandemic and past,” explained Countrywide Park Foundation President and CEO Will Shafroth. “From green time to display screen time to family time, the National Park Basis is helping the Nationwide Park Service and parks local community have interaction pupils with instructional chances across the place.”

Acadia’s grant will provide assistance to generate, pilot, and refine interactive plans that link college students and their families to Acadia experiences and assets:

• Pilot weekly digital character golf equipment for grades 3-8 in a area university district

• Make pleasurable, educational, and socially distanced outdoor pursuits for households, this kind of as scavenger hunts and pop-up self-guided trails

• Adapt a set of spring in-man or woman field outings to a virtual format

• Develop a new digital system sequence for households and specific wants audiences.

Because 2011, NPF has engaged far more than one million college students in academic programs connecting them with national parks throughout the country. Before this yr, NPF declared its target to join an additional a single million students to parks more than the upcoming four many years. Many thanks to non-public philanthropy, which include assist for Open Outside for Young ones from Union Pacific Railroad, a leading husband or wife of NPF’s Youth Schooling and Engagement initiative Winnebago Industries Foundation Niantic Sierra Columbia Sportswear Parks Job The Batchelor Basis, Inc. Humana and quite a few particular person donors, NPF is investing practically $1 million in the Open up Outdoors for Kids Hybrid Mastering system supporting communities throughout the region all through the 2020-2021 college year.

Master far more about NPF’s efforts to have interaction pupils with nationwide parks as school rooms.

The Nationwide Park Basis operates to secure wildlife and park lands, protect background and tradition, teach and engage youth, and link people all over the place to the marvel of parks. We do it in collaboration with the Nationwide Park Assistance, the park companion community, and with the generous help of donors, with out whom our perform would not be possible. Study additional at www.nationalparks.org.