From Screens to Streams (continued)


respectively. But is environmental literacy as delivered through a screen enough to cultivate a new generation of environmental stewards? Does there not need to be a second movement, one of direct connection with our biological neighbors and our geologi- cal phenomenon? Furthermore, these often smart, creative, and important media projects meant to attract attention to an envi- ronmental cause tend to focus overwhelm- ingly on the potential calamities that could result from our cur- rently precarious global environmental state. While this awareness is vital to a 21st Century environmental literacy, it can all too often result in a feeling of hopeless- ness in the audience, particularly for young people who may have never seen a spawn- ing Pacific Northwest salmon in their home watershed but know all to well of their declining numbers, just to offer up one example. Recently, this despair among young people regarding the state of the natural world has been given a name: ecophobia. If the only exposure our youth have to ecosystems comes from YouTube or Google Earth, regardless of how charismatic that exposure may be, their sense of what the natural world is, and the environmental issues that threaten it, will not only be abstract but often times lead to resignation or detachment. While the knowledge, or even environmental literacy, gained from these media may be perfectly relevant and the amount of information prodigious, what is lost in transla- tion? Unsurprisingly, if our youth are only consuming informa- tion about the environment by way of their television or laptop screen, it isn’t hard to imagine a certain level of ambivalence or even dread dominating their perspective of the natural world. Consequently, there is evidence that our next generation of envi- ronmental stewards may be giving up before they even start. Is there a union of technological and environmental literacy


StreamWebsTM


to be found, one that uses technology to encourage our youth to experience the natural world for themselves? One that uses technology as a bridge to outdoors? One that adds that unquan- tifiable experience of being surrounded by nature and feeling part of it? It is just such a union that can help us forge a new era


Page 24


of environmental stewardship while encouraging the use and creation of new tools to confront environmental degradation.


Technology as a “Bridge” to the Outdoors The educational possibilities that modern, web-based


classrooms with local watershed research and restoration projects. StreamWebsTM


will get students outside, linking will provide 21st century


students with the tools they need to assume an active role in improving the health of our freshwater ecosystems.


technology provides are startling in both number and content. Combined with the fact that we now have an entire generation that cannot imagine life without an iPod and a cell phone (and are rarely seen without both), the opportunities to employ technology in the classroom are limitless. As outlined above, the problem isnít technology itself, but our propensity to let it take us outside of ourselves and replace actual experience with virtual experience, while promoting detachment and even hopelessness regarding the state of the environment. So how do we utilize the manifold educational applications of emerging technology without compromising the vital, irre- placeable, and less quantifiable educational and ecological ben- efits of hands- on, authentic, experiential learning? Today’s students are so comfortable with technology, its use to supplement authentic, place- based investigations seems both timely and necessary to reconnect students to the out- doors and support their role as active, lifelong environmental stewards. There are now multiple


web-based tools, rich internet


applications, and geo-RSS mapping interfaces that educators and students can use to find place-based venues for study, create dynamic research projects, and share the product of their study online. Moreover, the open source movement, one of the most promising and unapologetically democratic developments in the short but extremely prolific evolution of the web, is offer- ing up professional tools, from blogging to video editing to GIS mapping, that are beginning to change the landscape of content creation and dissemination on the web. No longer are the tools needed to create dynamic media projects or sophisticated geo- graphic models only for those with high budgets for the latest plastic-wrapped software package. The open source movement, essentially an organic network of software and website develop- ers working collectively to create new and revolutionary ways to use the web, is churning out free, accessible, and innovative alternatives to the software applications that have been the (expensive) status quo for at least two decades. In addition, there are now numerous ways to access and post local informa-


www.clearingmagazine.org/online CLEARING 2010


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