2026 LEEF Conference Wakulla Wild

This session highlights a University of Florida Extension project that integrates the Community Action Project for the Environment (CAPE) framework with youth from Scouting America, Girl Scouts of the USA, and other groups. Parents and troop leaders are equipped to guide youth through multi-month, community-based environmental action projects. Evaluation results demonstrate growth in youth scientific literacy, skills, and efficacy, illustrating how CAPE empowers meaningful, long-term environmental action.

What do 15 years of growing look like and where we are finding our next generation?
Sharing our story about using Growing Up WILD in our Florida Youth Conservation Centers Network (FYCCN) and evaluation of this national program from educators to the children that benefit from the curriculum. We will ‘show and tell’ how you can bring this award-winning early childhood education curriculum to your classrooms, centers, and business that work with children ages 3-7.

The State Coordinator for Project WILD in Florida, Yatska Valentin, will bring resources, only for presentation participants, on how you can become a facilitator or become educators for the program. Learn more about Project WILD, Aquatic WILD and Flying WILD opportunities in your area. Patricia Brown, Assistant Director at the Joe Budd Youth Conservation Center in Midway, Fl. will share the success of the program in their monthly program both on site and in schools. We will tell the story of FYCCN and how you can become a partner with some great resources for you to use.
This presentation will include activities that you can immediately use.

This lightning presentation highlights a project from the 2025 Civic-Environmental Education (CEE) Change Fellowship of the North American Association of Environmental Educators (NAAEE). The project aims to provide professional development workshops that integrate Traditional Ecological Knowledge into environmental education with the support of AI tools for environmental educators in Africa. Lessons learned from these international workshops will offer valuable insights into professional development for educators in Florida and beyond.

As environmentalists, our goal is to engage in activities that improve the well-being of the environment and promote the conservation and preservation of natural resources.  If environmentalists use AI, it raises important questions about whether this use aligns with their ecological values. Using correlation and regression analysis, I investigated how the ecological values of environmentalists influence their use of AI. Results will answer the question: “How environmentalists’ perceived usefulness of AI and their familiarity with AI's environmental impacts predictive factors of their AI usage?”.

This poster showcases how geospatial technologies and immersive media can enhance environmental education. Using high-resolution 360° imagery and virtual-tour software, the USF Botanical Gardens were captured and transformed into an interactive virtual experience. Visitors can navigate the gardens and click embedded buttons that link directly to the USF Plant Atlas, providing authoritative information on featured plant species.  The tour serves as a dynamic teaching and outreach resource: it allows students, researchers, and the public to explore Florida’s diverse plant communities anytime, while deepening understanding of native ecosystems.