CLEARING Teaching resources for ecology, sustainability and community


From Screens to Streams: Using


Technology as a “Bridge” to the Outdoors


Rather than viewing technology as an enemy of environmental literacy, The Freshwater Trust is convinced that technology-based learning can help cultivate an environmental sensibility by serving as a “bridge” to the outdoors. StreamWebsTM


By Ryan Johnson W CLEARING 2010


hen I was ten years old, I was absolutely obsessed with the original Nintendo Entertain- ment System. My cousins had one, my best friend had one, it seemed like everyone I knew had a Nintendo. I would have done just about anything to have one as well, but my parents refused, despite my continuous complaints and numerous solicitations.


I thought I was the most neglected ten-year-old child in the


world, while my parents, patiently suffering my pleas, would remind me that the Beartooth, Big Horn, and Pryor Mountains, the McCullough Peaks, and Shoshone River were just beyond my doorstep. These natural features were, in fact, truly magnifi- cent and unavoidable constituents of the landscape, dominating every view with snow-capped peaks, granite cliff faces, rainbow- colored bluffs, and crystal clear riffles, containing everything from wild horses to Grizzly Bears to rattlesnakes. Now, perhaps


needless to say, I prize every single second I am able to gaze upon the mountains and deserts of northern Wyoming, and I cherish every memory of running through alpine forests and mountain biking through tumbling sage brush. But a conscious acknowledgement of my privilege of being born into such natural wonder eluded me, and as a result I still found modern, escapist forms of entertainment media seductive. Even in a place completely dominated by mountains, peaks, rivers, valleys, prairie, and high desert, I still found a way


www.clearingmagazine.org/online


is a 21st century web-based platform designed to combat, rather than encourage, Nature Deficit Disorder.


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