Finding Your Place With Digital Technology

By Bob Coulter

Like many environmental educators, my staff and I struggle to promote direct experience with nature in an increasingly digital world. This tension is captured in the 4^th grade student quoted in Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods who preferred to play inside since that’s where the electrical outlets are. More recently, in his new book The Anxious Generation Jonathan Haidt contrasts traditional play-based childhood with what he calls a phone-based version. While there are elements of truth in these framings, I’m not sure we need to sound the alarm quite so loudly.

As an educator for almost 40 years — the past 20 as director of an ecology center — I’ve seen the power of well-crafted technology uses as well as the failure of less well thought out adventures. Drawing from this experience, I will argue that the best uses of technology are those which extend students’ engagement in ways that can’t be done without it. With this, teachers should be techno-selective, focusing on calm technology – basically technology that is there only when you need it and then it recedes into the background. As John Tinnell describes it, the goal is to “be empowering without being overburdening – where the resources of connectivity might yield context and insight without spilling forth to the point of distraction.”

Recently, I’ve been reviewing Green Teacher articles which are consistent with this selective/calm approach. I won’t pretend to know these projects in any detail, but I hope my short remarks here promote thinking about the learning spaces presented and more generally on our collective mission to engage students in the natural world, in school and out.

Starting off with an article I co-authored with Skyler Wiseman, Stories in the Data focuses helping students use data to make sense of the world. By focusing on kids’ lived experiences, they come to better know and appreciate the cycles we all live in. We highlight two aspects of nature which are prominent in kids’ lives: Temperature variation and changes in sunlight across the seasons. While the specific technologies evolve over time, the core exercise of noticing what is happening and putting numbers on it is an important part of coming to know local ecosystems. From there students are better equipped to compare and contrast those further away. We also focused on aligning these explorations with the developmental capacity of the students, with younger kids recording data on tally sheets with stickers while older students use digital tools to collect and organize data. Consistent with the low-key “ask” of calm technology, all this requires is a few minutes a day to update observations.

In Shoot Down Nature Deficit Disorder! Aimee Keillor shares how she’s used digital photography to engage students with nature. As students take pictures, they forge a stronger and more memorable connection to their discoveries. Depending on the scope of the project, photos can be included in a personal journal or be part of a collective effort such as a local field guide. For those feeling more adventurous, students can connect with peers in other locations to share and compare discoveries. A key aspect here is the scalability of projects from simple recording of memories to ventures which will require some teacher scaffolding and a higher time commitment. Also, note the cross-disciplinary opportunities to engage students with nature whose first interests might be in artistic or literary endeavors.

Since much of environmental education relates to place, facility with maps quickly becomes an essential skill. In her article Analyzing Wildlife Habitat Dawn Tanner offers suggestions for using Google Earth to explore environmental issues ranging from land cover in the school yard to broader issues such as wildlife habitat and protected areas. While these geospatial tools were just appearing on the educational horizon when the article was published, opportunities now abound to use maps and aerial photographs as students explore near and far. Beyond Google, Esri’s ArcGIS Online tools are available at no cost to schools, and many other sites embed aerial images and remote sensing data. As I suggested at the outset, starting local is a good way for students to build skills they can use for more distant explorations.

For those looking for more extensive technology integration, Pauline Roberts’ article Doing Business in Birmingham describes a project which supported 5^th and 6^th grade student investigations of local businesses’ awareness of sustainability. After interviewing a number of owners they created a wiki (remember those?) to provide sustainability information. While the technology they used is a bit dated, the project model ports well to the numerous online publication spaces available today. In terms of educational value, projects like this present opportunities for environmentally-focused community engagement as well as chances to develop skills in writing and editing as well as photography and web site design.

To close, Justin Hougham and Steve Kerlin offer important considerations in their article To Unplug or Plug In. As they note, a place-based approach which helps anchor students in their local community can be very useful. Many of us have found that local observations and images deepen awareness while serving as a reference point for exploring phenomena more distant in time and place. Within this place-based frame of reference, hardware, web sites, and apps can be chosen for their usefulness in extending both structured field experience and things students experience in their daily lives. While the specific tools and apps they share have become dated, Hougham and Kerlin’s approach continues to be valuable.

What each of these articles has in common is a proven model for engaging students in the environment with modest but strategic use of technology. While the specifics need to be updated with the times, the underlying ideas have continuing value as we plan our engagement with students.

Bob Coulter is the director of the Litzsinger Road Ecology Center, a field site in suburban St. Louis managed by the Missouri Botanical Garden. In an earlier life he was an award-winning elementary-grade teacher for 13 years.