by editor | May 6, 2010 | K-12 Classroom Resources, Place-based Education
By Mark Costigan
reprinted from The Oregon Daily Emerald
Andrew Nyman, Associate Professor Wetland Wildlife ... Andrew Nyman, Associate Professor Wetland Wildlife Management & Ecology of LSU AgCenter, takes samples of beach sand beside oil booms at the coast of South Pass, south of Venice, Louisiana, where oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead continues to spread in the Gulf of Mexico, May 2, 2010. A huge wind-driven oil slick bore down on the U.S. Gulf coast on Sunday, threatening an environmental catastrophe, and the Obama administration heaped pressure on BP Plc to halt the uncontrolled spill from its ruptured Gulf of Mexico well. Since the explosion and sinking last week of the Deepwater Horizon rig, a disaster scenario has emerged with hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil spewing unchecked into the Gulf and moving inexorably northward to the coast. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
It’s sad that it takes a threat of crude oil reaching American beachfront property for people to wake up.
It seems the only way people unite around fighting environmental degradation is when the effects become visible and personal. If only there were some way to make the color of carbon dioxide highlighter yellow or jet black. Then perhaps people would wake up to the havoc they’re wreaking on my playground.
That’s right. My personal playground, the outdoors, continues to get pushed around like a new kid being picked on by a 12-year-old bully — except nature is a little older than the humans who bully it.
It took 24 days in the wilderness with the National Outdoor Leadership School for me to wake up to the effects of climate change. A month before moving to Eugene, I embarked on an outdoor educator expedition in the Absaroka wilderness in Wyoming. Between eating a third of the amount of food I normally eat, nearly dying on a glacier, and conquering 13,000-foot peaks, the expedition not only gave me a new appreciation for wild places, but it humbled me to something similar to my original human form. (more…)
by editor | May 4, 2010 | Place-based Education
By Greg Fizzell, Tiffany Cooper, and Aly Bean
The education program at the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute (PCEI) gives local school groups and community members an opportunity to learn about the natural world while participating in community service. PCEI programs are unique in nature because of their ability to connect state-of-the-art watershed restoration projects with community education. Through a multitude of programs from pond and stream ecology to the Complete Kinder Series, PCEI serves over 1,500 K-university students, teachers, and citizens annually. (more…)
by editor | Apr 2, 2010 | Place-based Education
Homewaters Project, an educational nonprofit in Seattle, successfully uses Geographic Information System (GIS) technology as one of its methods of connecting students to their natural and social communities.
By Todd Burley, Homewaters Project
As place-based educators, we often shudder at the notion that technology can connect people to the world around them. The very idea of sitting in front of a computer to learn about your home place seems incongruous. But Homewaters Project, an educational nonprofit in Seattle, successfully uses Geographic Information System (GIS) technology as one of its methods of connecting students to their natural and social communities.
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In the foreword to David Sobel’s book Place-Based Education, Laurie Lane-Zucker defines place-based education as “the pedagogy of community, the reintegration of the individual into her homeground, and the restoration of the essential links between a person and her place.” Elementary school students must begin this process by simply developing awareness and knowledge of their local environment and community. For middle and high school students, however, appropriate education engages them in their community as active citizens.
Technology can actually be used to connect these older students to certain social and environmental issues in their community that are beyond direct experience in both time and scope. Consider:
• Population density in relation to stream health,
• Income levels in relation to pollution spots, or
• Shoreline changes over the past century.
How can a teacher bring these locally relevant large social and environmental issues to light?
Water and Community
In three Seattle middle schools, eighth grade students use technology to visualize these complex neighborhoods and watershed issues in their own home place. Coordinated and created by Homewaters Project, the Water and Community GIS Program brings together real world data from local governments, volunteers from local colleges, and the GIS software ArcView to help prepare students to become active citizens.
Designed to last about a month, Water and Community engages students in the ecological and social issues of their home place while teaching them the GIS skills that professional planners use to help understand and solve such issues. Using their home watershed as the organizing framework, the students investigate water quality issues using different data layers, including:
-one that shows where nearby streams are,
-one that pinpoints leaking underground storage tanks, and
-one that displays the population density by census tract.
These line, point, and area layers can be placed over each other (like transparencies) to visualize their relationships, and together provide a basis for students to investigate questions about hydrology and water quality in their community.
Students also use GIS data to find out specific information about features such as creek names, businesses that require pollution permits, or predominant types of land cover in their neighborhood. Rather than learning about issues in far away states or countries, these students study the deeper story behind places they see everyday. Over the course of five classroom sessions, they learn information about their neighborhood that few residents ever discover. Prepared by this experience, Water and Community participants become more informed and, hopefully, more engaged future citizens.
Making Learning Relevant
One problem with technology in education is that it can lack relevance for students. Yet the Water and Community GIS Program offers an example of how to connect students to their place using technology. When the concept of place-based education guides the application of technology, truly remarkable learning can result.
As always, a key question must be, “What is the goal?” If technology enhances the student learning experience and helps achieve that goal, technology can be a wonderful tool. For Homewaters Project, and other place-based education organizations, the goal is to connect people to their home place and engage them in their community.
As students reach middle and high school age, GIS application using local data can bring alive and clarify complex issues every community must confront — and make the issues immediate for young people as they prepare to become citizens. While every community is unique, and obviously not every educational goal can be served with technology, Homewaters Project shows that strategically applied technology can enhance place-based education.
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Todd Burley is the Outreach Coordinator for the Homewaters Project in Seattle. Homewaters can be reached at 9600 College Way North, Seattle WA 98103; (206) 526-0187 or at www.homewatersproject. org
by editor | Feb 25, 2010 | Outdoor education and Outdoor School, Place-based Education
Anne Marie Untalan, Michael Becker, and Ashley Sprouse, developers of the HRMS Outdoor Classroom Project.
CLEARING: What have been the most difficult issues in getting this project started?
Michael Becker: One of the Permaculture Design Method principles is to start small, and I highly advocate for starting with small projects that you can have initial success with. Trying to get space is often a hurdle, and if you can show that you have managed a small space efficiently and generated student interest and outcomes you’re more likely to be able to expand. It’s important to have a sense of where you’d like to go in the future but be focused on what you can do today. (more…)
by editor | Feb 25, 2010 | Outdoor education and Outdoor School, Place-based Education, Schoolyard Classroom
Hood River Middle School Outdoor Classroom Project
The Outdoor Classroom Project is a work in progress where students are the researchers, engineers, designers, architects, builders, and users of a multidisciplinary, multi-sensory learning experience.
What you see when you approach the schoolgrounds at Hood River Middle School is nothing short of remarkable. From solar panels on the roof to a working greenhouse in the back, Hood River Middle School exhibits the markings of a unique and visionary school of the future.
As more and more schools around the country are beginning to organize their curriculum to include concepts of ecology, community, and sustainability, some programs, through innovation, vision and determination, move forward in meshing those concepts into a cohesive, integrated and successful program and serve as a model for others to follow. The Hood River Middle School Outdoor Classroom Project has become an exemplary program that began small and grew to encompass an ecological framework that gives students a unique blend of science, technology and permaculture that connects them to real world issues within their community.
Since 1998, science teacher Michael Becker has guided a program that offers students a higher level of connectivity between school and community. Using a hands-on approach to solving real-life problems, students at HRMS accelerate through the basic skills and concepts outlined in the Oregon Academic Benchmarks. The Outdoor Classroom Project is a work in progress where students are the researchers, engineers, designers, architects, builders, and users of a multidisciplinary, multi-sensory learning experience. The Outdoor Classroom Project connects students to key concepts in sustainability through a field based, experience-driven curriculum. Key themes of the project include Diversity, Water, Food, Energy, and Waste.
The Outdoor Classroom Project is divided into three separate strands. (more…)
by editor | Feb 24, 2010 | Marine/Aquatic Education, Place-based Education
Connecting Students and Salmon in Their Watershed
How rearing salmon in an elementary classroom can foster powerful teaching and learning in the content areas, environmental awareness, and good stewardship of the Earth
By Daniel S. King, PhD
My transition in January of last year to a new position teaching science, math, and technology to 5th graders at STARBASE ATLANTIS on Navy Base Kitsap has caused me to reflect on my 11 years as an elementary school teacher.
There is no doubt that my work as a public school teacher was rewarding in countless ways; however, the most profound, meaningful, and enjoyable experience for me during my years as an elementary school teacher was participating in a Salmon in the Classroom Project. Likewise, I believe the project has had a positive and enduring impact on the hundreds of students that participated along with me.
For 10 years my students and I raised salmon in the classroom and then released them into Clear Creek in Silverdale, Washington which is located on the Kitsap Peninsula.
As an elementary school teacher I had taught every level from kindergarten through 6th grade. My experience teaching at each of these grade levels enabled me to become familiar with the broad K-6 curriculum as well as the developmental continuum of K-6 learners. One of the most important things I learned from my wide-ranging teaching experience is that a vast majority of children at every elementary grade level are passionate about protecting animals and animal habitats in the world in which they live. Furthermore, Iíve learned that through real-world inquiry-based learning activities even the least motivated students become exceptionally engaged in the learning process. It is true that over the course of 10 years I took over 900 children in kindergarten through 6th grade on salmon release field trips without experiencing any serious behavior issues! Clearly, outdoor education provides opportunities for powerful teaching and learning events for all types of learners. Indeed, the outdoors provides a positive context for learning in a way that cannot be duplicated within the confines of a classroom.
Salmon in the Classroom
Each January, shortly after my students returned from winter break, they would arrive at school one morning surprised to see a new addition to the classroom–a specially designed salmon tank set up and ready to receive salmon eggs. Within a few days of discovering the salmon tank, a volunteer from the Kitsap Kiwanis Club would arrive unannounced with a small burlap bag full of salmon eggs. He would then dump about 200 pinkish pearl-like Chum Salmon eggs into the egg tray in front of an audience of curious on-lookers. Once all the eggs were deposited the students looked closely and discovered that the eggs were translucent and that you could see the eyes of the tiny fish inside them. “These are eyed-eggs and soon to hatch,” the Kiwanis volunteer would explain. So began the process of discovery and learning about the salmon life cycle.
For the week or so after the salmon eggs arrived, eager learners would flock to the tank each day to marvel and wonder at the sight of salmon fry hatching. The eggs bounced and jiggled until finally the alevin (also know as sac fry) emerged complete with their fatty bulge (a yolk sac for nourishment) in their abdomens. The alevin would then wriggle and squeeze through the wire mesh of the egg tray and swim downward into the rocks and gravel where they remained hidden for approximately six weeks. “Where did they all go?” the students would wonder upon discovering no more eggs on the egg tray and no baby salmon to be seen anywhere in the tank. “What do you suppose happened to them?” I would respond.
Day after day the children would peer curiously into the window of the tank. At first, the tank would be frequented by almost every student in the class. Then, over the ensuing weeks with no activity to be seen, curiosity would begin to wane and the tank would be visited by fewer and fewer students. Approximately six weeks later, usually when a student strayed to the tank on a trip to the water fountain or pencil sharpener, the class would become startled by the cry, “I saw one! I saw a baby salmon!” With this, the entire class would race to the tank to have a look. Sure enough, several salmon fry would be swimming about the tank. Indeed, as their fatty deposits diminish, the fry “button up” and emerge from their rocky hiding places in search of food. “It’s time to begin feeding our fish,” I would say. It was also time to begin the next phase of discovery and learning.
Using Children’s Inquiry as a Catalyst for Learning
Children of all ages are naturally curious about ambiguous and novel phenomena and experiences. Teachers can take advantage of children’s curiosity and wonder to foster inquiry-based learning events. Learning fueled by inquiry is powerful and engaging. Inquiry sparks motivation, desire, and purpose for learning because children naturally seek to make meaning of ambiguous and novel information. Things in nature, particularly live animals, seem to appeal to most children fostering in them a desire to use their keen observation skills. This is what makes the salmon in the classroom project such a powerful catalyst for teaching and learning new concepts and skills. Through the salmon in the classroom project using a variety of cooperative and exploratory learning activities I was able to teach students in grades K-6 core concepts in both science and social studies and integrate lesson in language arts, math, and visual arts thereby creating a multi-disciplinary salmon education curriculum.
For example, in the process of raising the salmon fry, students learned not only about the salmon life cycle, but that all animals (including humans) have a life cycle. One way this was accomplished was by having students cut out pictures from kid-friendly magazines of people in various stages of life (infant, toddler, child, pre-teen, teen-ager, young adult, and so on) for use in making their own human life-cycle posters. In the process, students were able to compare and contrast the salmon life cycle and the human life cycle. (more…)
