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Virtual Learning Resources

PROGRAMMING UPDATE: Protecting the health of our communities matters as deeply to us as sparking lifelong learning and stewardship. We’re implementing rigorous sanitation of education materials, adapting programs for social distance, and modeling the best guidelines available for COVID-19 safety. We currently offer:

đź’§ Virtual/online stream and watershed study experiences.
đź’§ Outdoor-only education programs located at Stroud Water Research Center.
đź’§ Outdoor education programs at your site (e.g., school or local park).

No matter where you are in the world, contact the Stroud Center’s education department or submit a request to schedule.

Stroud Water Research Center’s education department is here to support students and families during ongoing COVID-19 mitigation. Thousands of students and community members who would usually flood the Stroud Center campus for education programs are now quarantined at home. We miss you. We are here for you. And we are committed to supporting your efforts to #LearnAtHome.

We understand these are not normal teaching and learning conditions. Our students, teachers, and families are experiencing emergency remote teaching and learning—or as some have called it, “pandemic pedagogy.” Together, we hope to transform this into “positive pedagogy” through innovative virtual learning resources that help you discover, inquire, and learn — at your own pace, in and around your own homes, to meet your own unique needs.

On this webpage, you can explore fun, freshwater-focused resources for all ages, most of which are free! Curated by our education team, these resources transport the stream-to-the-screen and help you experience your home watershed and nearby nature in your own yard.

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Want to receive new virtual learning resources in your inbox? We’ve rolled virtual learning resources into our Education E-Newsletter. It will now feature educational resources, videos, recorded programs, a list of upcoming virtual events, and/or other creative or goofy learning things our team of educators come up with.

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Virtual E-News Archive
Screenshot of the Watershed Awareness Using Technology and Environmental Research for Sustainability online curriculum.
Discover Free Middle School Watershed Education Lessons
The 10-lesson WATERS curriculum is student-centered, place-based, and accessible to those of varying abilities.
An video still showing an aerial view of buildings near a lake in an arid environment.
Future of Water
The scarcity of drinking water is beginning to capture the world’s attention but a radical source of water might just be found in one of Earth’s driest places.
Dip Your Toes in the Water with the Runoff Simulation
Dip Your Toes in the Water with the Runoff Simulation
The Runoff Simulation shows how land use and soil determine whether rainfall infiltrates the soil, runs off, or is evaporated and transpired by plants.
Brownies flex their tree-planting muscles
Tree-rific Virtual Learning Resources on Streamside Forests
Every tree we plant plays a vital role by providing a natural buffer zone between our land use and the stream it protects.
Still from the electrofishing video.
STEM Career Spotlight: Electrofishing to Determine Stream Health
Have you ever wondered what swims by your feet in your local creek? Learn how we use electrofishing to survey the fish living in the east branch of White Clay
Photo of trout fingerlings in a tank.
How Do Trout Grow on Trees?
While they more literally grow from eggs into alevins, fingerlings, and adults, trout “grow” on trees because their health and survival depend on streamside forests.
Three high school students examine rocks collected from a stream.
ROCK OUT with New Resources from the Rock Pack Experiment!
The Rock Pack Experiment builds exciting, real-world connections among stream ecology, engineering, and geomorphology.
A Freshwater Rockstar: The Net-Spinning Caddisfly
A Freshwater Rockstar: The Net-Spinning Caddisfly
Net-spinning caddisflies benefit the entire ecosystem as ecosystem engineers, or organisms that maintain, modify, or create habitats.
Explore Your Backyard Watershed and Others Worldwide with the Leaf Pack Network!
Explore Your Backyard Watershed and Others Worldwide with the Leaf Pack Network!
How can homemade leaf packs and an online data portal help you study creeping, crawling aquatic macroinvertebrates?
Dive into a Virtual Resource for Teaching and Learning with Aquatic Macroinvertebrates!
Dive into a Virtual Resource for Teaching and Learning with Aquatic Macroinvertebrates!
You can quite literally experience the creature comforts of staying at home with an innovative, web-based resource to support aquatic macroinvertebrate identification.
Melinda Daniels with experimental stream flumes.
Dive into Water Science Careers!
Our Water Science Career Videos engage viewers of all ages in real careers in freshwater-focused science, technology, engineering, and math.
WikiWatershed Toolkit
WikiWatershed Toolkit
The WikiWatershed® Toolkit supports citizens, conservation practitioners, municipal decision-makers, researchers, educators, and students to advance knowledge and stewardship of fresh water.
Water Quality App screenshots.
Water Quality Mobile App
The Water Quality mobile app is a water-monitoring learning tool designed for use by educators and their students, citizen scientists, and researchers.
Macroinvertebrates.org
Macroinvertebrates.org
Macroinvertebrates.org is an interdisciplinary effort to create an innovative resource for aquatic insect identification to support citizen science activities.
Rock Pack Experiment
Rock Pack Experiment
The Rock Pack Experiment combines STEM topics of engineering, ecology, geomorphology, and mathematics through the world of the net-spinning caddisfly.
Students in Oregon performing a leaf pack experiment.
The Leaf Pack Network
The Leaf Pack Network® is an international network of teachers, students, and citizen monitors investigating their local stream ecosystems.
EnviroDIY.org
EnviroDIY.org
EnviroDIY members can showcase their environmental sensors and homegrown approaches to monitoring, data management, or any number of other topics.
Monitor My Watershed
Monitor My Watershed
Monitor My Watershed lets you explore macroinvertebrate data from the Leaf Pack Network  and sensor datasets from EnviroDIY, an environmental science and monitoring community.
Model My Watershed modeling results for Brandywine Creek.
Model My Watershed
Model My Watershed® is a powerful web app that lets users compare how different conservation or development scenarios could modify runoff and water quality.

A special thank you to the Connelly Foundation and other donors for making it possible for us to create and distribute these virtual learning resources.

Connelly Foundation logo.