Elgin High School will host a series of online webinars next month featuring lectures and Q&A sessions with some of the world’s top scientists and environmentalists.
The National Biodiversity Teach In will kick off Feb. 5 and is a way to bring global leaders face to face with students and community members, according to the district.
“This is the chance to be exposed to biodiversity by interacting with professionals all around the world,” Elgin High School environmental sciences teacher Deb Perryman said in a district news release. “Students are given a purpose to empower one another and know they can make a difference in our environment.”
The webinars will feature everyone from environmental activist and actor Ed Begley Jr. to Kimberly Wasserman, the 2013 North American Goldman Environmental Prize recipient, according to the district.
Perryman has taught biodiversity — the study of species and the ecosystem — for more than 20 years, according to the district.
The fragility of the world’s biodiversity hit home for students after learning about Martha, the world’s last passenger pigeon who died in a Cincinnati zoo in 1914, ending a species that had once numbered in the billions but was ultimately wiped from the face of the earth in less than 40 years, according to the National Biodiversity Teach In website.
Elgin High students will be joined online by other classrooms across the globe, according to the program.
Last year’s webinars featured more than 8,000 participants from the U.S., Canada, India, England and Germany.
This year’s program already has about 12,000 participants from a variety of countries, according to the program’s Twitter feed.
Speakers will lead a lecture on an environmental topic and leave time for discussion during the webinars, which will take place during the school day and into the early evening Feb. 5, Feb. 11, Feb. 12, Feb. 19 and Feb. 26, according to the district.
Lecturers scheduled to participate include everyone from marine biologists to climate scientists, NASA officials and experts on water, geology and whales.
The webinars are free and open to the public, but there is limited space, and registration is required, according to the district.
For information, go to www.nationalbiodiversityteachin.com. The events will also be broadcasted at that site.
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