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-- TEACHER & STUDENT HUMMINGBIRD GROUP PARTICIPATION --

Operation RubyThroat is offered by Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History as a way to excite students and other individuals about science and cross-disciplinary learning, using the Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) as the topic. Because the project and this website are administered entirely by volunteers on their own personal time, we ask that participants follow basic guidelines to keep the project from becoming impossible to administer. The registration fee is $30 (except for home-schooled groups at $20), and further donations are welcome and are used to underwrite activities of Operation RubyThroat, including banding research on Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

1. An individual teacher and his/her students are invited to join Operation RubyThroat as a "RubyThroat Group." A group may be a primary or elementary school teacher's entire class, or one class period of students for a teacher in middle school, junior high, or high school. A junior high teacher, for example, might have six different classes of life science; each of these classes would be one RubyThroat Group. A group may also be a cluster of home-schooled students and their parent/teacher.

2. To maximize learning, a RubyThroat Group should include no more than 30 students; classes larger than this should be broken into two or more RubyThroat Groups. A parent and his/her group of home-schooled students qualifies as a single RubyThroat Group, so long as no more than 30 students are involved.

3. To create an official RubyThroat Group, the teacher or parent of home-schooled students should register the group by completing the Teacher & Student Group Registration Form and paying the $20 registration fee per group. Please consider making an additional contribution to Operation RubyThroat when you register. Home-schooled groups also pay a $20 fee.

4. Interpreters, workshop leaders, scout leaders, nature center personnel, and similar informal education specialists who will use Operation RubyThroat with their members or visitors should register through the Other Leader Participation.

5. Individual students (K-16) and individual adults who would like to be official participants in Operation RubyThroat should register on the Individual Student or Adult Participation.

A RubyThroat Group that officially registers with Operation RubyThroat by completing the form and paying the annual registration fee will get the following benefits for one calendar year:

• Access to a special "Post Your Data" section of the Operation RubyThroat website. (This assures that data submitted by your Group are examined ahead of any submitted by unregistered participants.)
• Early feedback on questions and requests for guidance about hummingbird projects and activities. (This benefit may be especially important if a project or observation is time-sensitive and requires a quick response from the experts at Operation RubyThroat.)
• On-line access to the solutions for Hummingbird Puzzles & Quizzes and other pages available only to registered participants in Operation RubyThroat.
• A classroom poster sent by e-mail that indicates your students are part of an official RubyThroat Group in Operation RubyThroat.
• Preferential use of certain copyrighted materials on the Operation RubyThroat website. (Details are provided in the packet you receive by mail after registering.)
• A one-year subscription to the Operation RubyThroat electronic newsletter, sent to the e-mail address of the RubyThroat Group leader.
• Discounts on Operation RubyThroat souvenirs (T-shirts, etc.) as they become available.
• Priority opportunities to develop on-line Operation RubyThroat relationships with teachers and students in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Central American countries who have registered as RubyThroat Groups.
• A letter to your principal or supervisor indicating that by participating in Operation RubyThroat you demonstrate that you understand the value of involving your students in real-world science and cross-disciplinary activities, especially through on-line technologies such as the World Wide Web and e-mail.
• And . . . the satisfaction of knowing that you and your students, by participating in Operation RubyThroat, will have opportunities to help make the world a better place for hummingbirds . . . and for humans.
  

Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project is now affiliated with The GLOBE Program. If you are a GLOBE-certified educator, or if there is at least one GLOBE-certified teacher at your school or nature center, you are eligible to report hummingbird observations through Operation RubyThroat's new protocols outlined on the GLOBE Web site. See Operation RubyThroat & GLOBE.

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Operation RubyThroat is a registered trademark of Bill Hilton Jr. and Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History in York, South Carolina USA, phone (803) 684-5852. Contents of the overall project and this website--including photos--may NOT be duplicated, modified, or used in any way except with the express written permission of the author. To obtain permission or for further assistance on accessing this website, contact Webmaster.