What is a school focused on Environmental needs?

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I've been asked to think about what an environmental education looks like, what things we need, what do we want?

For most of these things it was really hard for me to answer.  Mainly because I think it's a lot like EdTech, sure we need things, but more than that we need a shift in how teachers think and interact with students.

More than anything, I think we need time for teachers and students to be outside, slightly unstructured but thinking and looking, this probably isn't the biggest seller in a standards, university focused world.

But students with time develop great systems thinking habits, they are passionately curious and are able to think creatively because their imagination has been developed.  They are used to being bored so they understand more about what it means to create things.  I feel they just understand more, and appreciate more.

We need people to stop thinking about specific skills students will gain, especially in a world where climate change is happening.  What the individual gains for themselves isn't so important, we need to focus on what we will gain for our planet, how we can all make a difference for our shared survival, not my immediate gain.

But still, I need to think about these things.  So any help would be great, what do we need to start something focused on environmental education, what skills will students develop, where do we go from here?

Presentation

So, here's my enviroed story.  It's a story more than a presentation, walking through why I am an environmental educator, and some of the worries I have, it moves to the hope that we collaborate together in a 21st century learning community.

My primary worry is that we are becoming too individual, and as individuals it is harder to make large scale changes.  I love the idea of personalized learning, but worry about how that effects our ability to work as a community and make decisions as a community.  My desire is to  move towards community based learning and problem solving while focusing on individual talents and ideas.

For me though, the formation of this community is key, and a big part of my community is the #enviroed team. So thanks for that.  +Nicki Hambleton has also been a huge part of my community development, and a big reason for my belief in the community based education with individual talents.

Final Project for Coetail

  by Gerry Dincher

Wow, this project took a lot of turns, but I feel it's much better now than when I envisioned it many months ago.


This was my original UbD.

We started off on high notes, all the grade 3 classes started by taking pictures and then blogging about their favourite spots at school, almost all of the students finished and almost all of the students shared with at least one person. So It was somewhat successful as a start.

Most students took a picture of their spot, and thought about it.  Most were of staircases, some were of the lunch area, a couple were of the soccer field.  They then described it with the potential audience of someone who is coming to the school. They used their blogs to write an entry.

Almost all of the students ended with the task, two students (who I was working with a little earlier) picked an outdoor spot and created a stop motion video (which will be in my video).  They then recorded some of the feelings over the images.

One of the students had a spot with a tree, and that tree died.  Just this week we planted a tree in that same spot.  His talking about his spot to his community really made a change in how people viewed their space.

Next time, I would want to have more time with the students.  I only had them once a week, which isn't a whole lot of time to dig deep into places and feelings.  We needed to spend more time on creating a more meaningful platform I think, and developing connections with other places.

I want this to be a more meaningful exercise on developing sense of place, so next time I would work with that as well. I want students to develop emotional connections to people and places. By developing our stories, we can work on this connection. Next time I would try to use more video (stop motion) and blend in more images than just the one.




All in all I enjoyed the whole Coetail experience.  It's been great building the standards into our shared units, and building more meaningful digital citizenship lessons into my co-teaching experiences. I'm going to continue to develop connections, I firmly believe in connectivism and will help my students find people they want to learn from as well.

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Developing relationships

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Just something to think about today, I think this will be the start of my presentation in a couple of weeks.  I'm discussing how to use technology in, and for the environment in elementary school.  I think it's all about relationships, what do you think?

Comm-unity

 Some rights reserved by Choconancy1

For +COETAIL most of my community involvement has been focused on #enviroed.  Since I'm merging the tech and environment.  We talk every Thursday, which is pretty amazing, well Thursday for me Wednesday night for everyone else.  Here is one of my favourite chats , mainly because it focuses specifically on tech and 21st century skills in environmental education.

As a group we explore what each other are doing, ask each other questions to get specifics, I've worked with two other teachers on their specific research project, and have asked a couple of teachers to work with me on my coetail project. 

I've been trying to merge these two for awhile

+Nicki Hambleton has helped me out a ton too. We talk often in person. We bounce ideas off each other with pizza and wine (even if we shouldn't always be eating it).  It's great for us (well me definitely) to be able to see reactions and just check in on and get checked in on.  This personally has been one of the most valuable tools for me, not that Nicki is a tool.  But she has directed me towards other people like Kerri-Lee and Dave, and has directed me towards Cognitive Coaching where I met up with other coetailers as well.  

Mostly I feel like I've moved beyond just messing around, I've built part of my community (especially with #enviroed).  Connectivism is a real thing in my life.  I'm building on my connections, sand still reaching out for others.  

It's been a great journey so far, and I'm looking forward to even more in the last month.

Hybrid Minds

 Some rights reserved by Sam Judson

This week, well the last couple of weeks, have been looking at Richard Louv's idea of Hybrid Minds. Technology is something we have always been working on, and I imagine always will, the natural world, the world we are connected to (without wireless) is always here, and hopefully always will be.  How can we pay attention to both? How can we develop both sustainably? Where do we go from here?

Lots of questions as I started reading these past couple of weeks, and while nothing has been explicitly answered, I feel my original thoughts are being reaffirmed. 

My project with getting the students outside and documenting their spots has taken a smallish turn.  Although they haven't been publishing their thoughts or feelings so much, they have displayed a different attitude towards being outdoors. 

Earlier in the year it was difficult to get them to put the ipads down, they wanted to keep holding on to them, checking out youtube videos, now they want to relax outside.  They've been putting the ipads down, and just laying down, looking at their spots and just being in nature. 

We have to find some way to mix the two of these realities though, and as I continue reading and working with our students, this is the goal.

Always Learning

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Reading George Couros' blog today about being Learning Savvy. In it he was talking about being tech savvy, and how he isn't always comfortable with the term.

As an EdTech coach, people definitely see me as someone who has technology skills (even though I don't necessarily see myself that way). Like George, I want to be more learning savvy.

Part of my action towards this is working on the Cognitive coaching workshops.  I want to be more focused on how we approach learning, with a tech and environmental ed perspective, but the goal is the same, what is best for students' learning.

Through my project on community, we have just finished our stories, and some of our blog entries.  We've talked about our favourite places and people in hopes that we can connect with incoming students, to make their transitions a little easier. It's not really about the tools we used, it's about what we learned about ourselves, our favourite spots, and how we can improve our community.