In Texas, middle school students in the Global Laboratory Project sampled their school's indoor air with a low-cost monitoring device, and communicated the results to scientists and student peers around the world using a computer and modem. When the students' extremely high carbon dioxide numbers arrived via electronic mail, their on-line mentors were convinced that the testing was done incorrectly. After a repeat sampling confirmed the result, state experts were summoned. With instruments costing thousands of dollars more, they got the same result, and immediately ordered repairs in a faulty ventilating system that had exposed all students and teachers at the school to potentially dangerous conditions.No doubt about it, the Communication Age has introduced significant new teaching tools as well as new twists to old tools. In spite of the fundamental problems, computer-aided EE presents a whole new set of extremely powerful ways of promoting, as perhaps never before, the goals and objectives of EE.Students in Maryland participate in the Greenbrier Aquatic Studies Program, an educational endeavor that mixes low-tech field trips with high-tech analysis. Field trips to state parks include water tests and fishing lessons. Once the students return to the classroom, they sit down at computers to analyze data and review information on topics like fish and water life using computer-aided multimedia software. Funded by the local utility, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and a local computing firm, this program that began with one classroom now includes more than 2,000 students.
A group of junior high students forms a campus ecology club. To share their interests and concerns, they create several interactive multimedia programs, blending images from a commercial laserdisc, digital snapshots they took in the local community, and images they downloaded from the Internet. The multimedia programs are shown to nearby elementary school classes as well as the PTA.
Decades of road building, farming, logging, and mining have taken their toll on watersheds throughout the United States. Facing the massive task of restoring water quality and fish habitat, scientists and land managers from federal and state agencies, corporations, schools, and citizen groups are sharing their knowledge and expertise in a national effort -- via an Environmental Protection Agency Non-Point Source computer bulletin board. Any individuals, groups, or schools now can tap this free collective resource to gather ideas for developing effective water-quality strategies for their own watersheds.
The new technology allows teachers, students, and in-service professionals to reach out to the wider world to research information, to collaborate with their peers (even internationally), and to analyze and present their information -- both for their own education and to create positive change.
Descriptions of technology's new tools, models for their use, and references for further exploration are listed in later sections of this manual. But the reality of any technological change in society is that the praises are often sung too loudly and there is often good reason to criticize new technologies that come with scant proof that they can yield the wonders attributed to them.
While there are many examples of successful and effective computer-aided EE, they must all be viewed in light of some fundamental questions about the impact of technology. These questions of technological misapplication, inequity of access, environmental substitution, and environmental impact lie at the heart of the emerging field of computer-aided EE. (See the Handouts section for a one-page summary of the following four "Problems in Perspective.")
It was "Community Day" at a recent conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and hundreds of school kids had come to visit the conference display hall, replete with the latest high technology for teaching science. Millions of dollars worth of hardware and software was buzzing away, offering exhibitors the latest tools to impress "the MTV generation." In the same giant hall, a small non-profit EE organization had a display with no whizbang gadgets, but one live "non-releasable" hawk. The hawk display was constantly surrounded by five times as many kids as any of the others!Although we are perhaps being unwittingly zapped into the Communication Age, it doesn't mean we had to erase our logic and memory banks along the way. We need to remind ourselves that just because a new technology exists doesn't mean we must use it or that it is necessarily the best way to educate and communicate. Just because we have a new set of hammers, doesn't mean that everything becomes a nail.
We also have to remind ourselves that "using" a computer is different from "learning" with a computer. We must not mistake interest in technology with learning and transferability. To date there has been little critical thinking, complex decision-making, or evaluation in computer-aided instruction. It is not that there cannot be, it is rather that using computers to encourage real thinking (instead of simply providing answers) is a challenge we have not fully addressed, perhaps due to enamoration with the technology.
WHETHER we choose to use educational technology, HOW we use it, and WHEN we use it, are critical decisions. Before we give way to the seemingly inevitable wave of computer-aided education, let's be sure that we are only willing to utilize these new tools as a means to achieve the guiding principles of EE. The best computer-aided environmental education is achieved when we do not allow the misapplication or inherent limits of technology to compromise what we know about how people learn best. (If you need a reminder of the principles, see page 6 of "Defining Environmental Education" in the Workshop Resource Manual.)
In another classroom across the San Francisco Bay, students sit down to desks
that wobble and creak, scrounge for slips of paper to write on, and share a
stubby pencil with no eraser. The teacher uses the last piece of chalk from a
box she had to buy with her own money because the district materials budget is
once again "running in the red."In the technology center of a well-to-do suburb of San Francisco, students sit
down at one of the school's 30 computers or plug in a laptop computer brought
from home. The teacher, using a color LCD display connected to her computer,
projects on a large screen the options from which students can choose. Using
the school's integrated network, they can choose to 1) connect to one of the
new CD-ROM or laserdisc players to explore the latest products in the school's
environmental multimedia library, 2) connect by high-speed modem to the
Internet and search databases related to their term paper topics, or 3) use a
scanner to digitize graphic images that can be used later when they desktop
publish their term papers.
Access to new educational technologies is increasing rapidly, but not for everyone. While the average number of computers per classroom continues to skyrocket and today there is a 12:1 student-to-computer ratio in U.S. schools, the ratios are much worse in areas where educational programs are poorly funded (Anderson, 1993). Limited availability of training and technical support for teaching staff can furtherimpede computer-aided education.
In light of those barriers, who can afford to participate? Will computer-aided education widen the gap in the quality of educational services accessible to students and teachers in districts with different economic status?
Conversation recently overhead in a teachers' lounge...Computer-aided EE could be viewed as a cost-effective, time-saving, and academically sound replacement for direct contact with the biophysical environment. Why take a field trip to the wetlands when you can use an interactive software program on wetlands? Why gather first-hand data on climate or water quality when you can get it through an on-line database? Why go bird watching when you can access a laserdisc of 50,000 color slides of birds, cross referenced and selected at the push of a button?Chris: "Hey Robin, when should we plan to take our students on our annual field trip to the wetlands? We've got to schedule the car pools, gather up a bunch of binoculars and water test kits, and oh yeah, are you still willing to borrow your neighbor's canoe?"
Robin: "Gee Chris, I'm really not into a wetlands field trip anymore. Not since our school got that great new interactive laserdisc on wetlands. It shows a lot more birds than we ever saw. It even plays bird calls and shows those weird bottom-dwelling insects we could never seem to find! And, hey, no more muddy boots or wet clothes. I hear there is a new tidepool CD-ROM being developed too. I'm hoping I can use it as a substitute for our annual beach trip."
The more time we spend at a computer, the less time we may spend interacting with other people and/or the biophysical environment. At what point does increased computer use become an artificial and unproductive substitute for interaction between people and the natural world?
We must be realistic about the impact of high-technology processes and products on the environment. While computers are often touted as a "clean" industry, a comprehensive cradle-to-grave view of their impact can be a sobering experience for computer users who see themselves as "green." The good news is that significant progress has been made in recent years, primarily because both vendors and consumers are finding that environmentally sound computing pays. (A one-page summary sheet, "Anatomy of a Green Computer User" can be found in the Handouts section.)
Computing is not as "clean and green" as we might initially believe (see "How to Make Compu-Stew"). While there are serious environmental problems associated with these technologies, recent advances and an aggressive stance on the part of most manufacturers hold promise for significant improvement. New technology has the potential to change the ways that information is discovered, shared, and processed. We have reviewed several problems with using computers in education, but computer-aided education also offers unique opportunities. Computers can help redefine the interaction between students and teachers, give students alternative modes of expression, and give users greater access to the world. See the Handouts section for a summary, "Promises in Perspective."
At a recent National Science Foundation conference on the use of Geographic Information Systems in education, a teacher from Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Virginia described how much guts it took to change from a traditional provider of information and a gatekeeper of wisdom to a facilitator among information gatherers. First she had to acknowledge that some of her students were more computer literate than she was and learn to rely on them. Second she had to acknowledge that there was a lot more information in "cyberspace" than she could put a fence around, and that her students could access the information without her. Third, she had to redefine her role to encourage her students to explore, guiding them to find productive pathways, and helping them analyze and understand what they discovered.
When a classroom is restructured to harness the potential contributions of technology, whole-group, lecture-style, "sit and get" instruction can yield to small-group, learner-centered, cooperative learning. Teachers can move from being "sages on the stage" to "guides by their side," becoming managers and facilitators who can spend more time engaged in creative, individualized instruction. Terms like "coach," "guide," "organizer," "initiator," "diagnostician," and the like appear frequently in literature describing the technology-oriented teacher's new role (Hannafin and Savenye, 1994).
Granted, a growing number of teachers follow this philosophy with or without computers. Others may discover that once they start experimenting with computer-aided EE, they may find it difficult to stay strictly with old models of instruction. A recent industry-funded study involving dozens of teachers and hundreds of students, representing a cross section of America's K-12 schools, found that their technologically integrated classroom:
The latest educational reform efforts promoting interactive learning environments often point to the critical role of technology (Pearlman, 1992). In addition, new technologies can serve as catalysts for educational reform, guiding teachers and educational institutions toward what has been labeled the "constructivist" view (Duffy and Jonassen, 1992; Yeager, 1991). This constructivist view is in many ways highly consistent with the well-established Guiding Principles of Environmental Education (UNESCO, 1978) and levels of environmental literacy (Hungerford, Peyton and Wilke, 1980).
Technology also can shatter the boundaries of what we label "school." With the aid of on-line learning networks, the learning environment (or "school") can explore new dimensions and places. Students are able to communicate and interact with peers and experts in other states and nations, without leaving their "classrooms." Computer networking broadens the dimensions of school from a four-walled building to the "global electronic village."
Changes Underlying Educational
Reform and Technological Utilization
Instruction Construction
=========================================================================
Classroom Activity Teacher-Centered Learner-Centered
Didactic Interactive
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Teacher Role Fact Teller Collaborator
Always Expert Sometimes Learner
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Student Role Listener Collaborator
Always Learner Sometimes Expert
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Instructional Emphasis Facts Relationships
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Memorization Inquiry and Invention
Concept of Knowledge Accumulation of Facts Transformation of Facts
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Demonstration of Success Quantity Quality
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Assessment Norm-Referenced Criterion-Referenced
Multiple-Choice Items Portfolios
and Performances
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Technology Use Drill and Practice Communication,
Collaboration,
Information Access,
Expression
(Dwyer, 1994)
Consider, for example, the following utilization of a suite of technological tools where a pair of middle-school classrooms participate in a computer-aided environmental education experience related to wetlands. While in this example the tools are listed in a particular order, the process would more likely consist of cycles and interactive patterns of technological utilization. Some adaptations would need to be made to accommodate age levels and availability of technologies.
In the classroom...
Environmental educators and trainers who would like to begin exploring the role of technology in EE might want start a local discussion group. One forum that might help is a guided seminar called "Tapping the Power of Today's Technology," offered through the University of Connecticut and Technology and Learning magazine. You organize a group of three or more colleagues in your own center, school, or district, choosing meeting times and locations. The group must meet for five two-hour sessions over a five-month period. Materials, including subscriptions to Technology and Learning for each participant, are provided. Group leaders receive a leader's guide with suggestions for activities and discussion questions.
It's very time-consuming just to stay abreast of educational-technology developments, let alone carefully experiment with and assess the potential application of these technologies. Teachers will need ongoing training (beyond one-shot programs) and we all must be cautious, patient, flexible, and open to change when teaching and learning with new technologies.
The pages ahead will explore the implications of two "new tools" that deserve our serious attention -- interactive multimedia and on-line learning. For those of you just entering technoland, don't worry, the basic definitions and uses of the full array of computer-aided education tools are covered under "Computer Basics" in the File Folder section.
In the technologically integrated classroom, environmental educators can use computers to tap into a pool of information from National Geographic film footage to data on ozone depletion -- instantly. In the school or education center, materials may be stored on a central computer or on computer diskettes, CD-ROM, or laserdiscs. Remote materials may be accessed via local electronic bulletin boards or international computer networks such as the Internet. In the near future, access to environmental resources will explode with the availability of fiber-optic pathways or wireless digital satellite transmission. Served to students on their computer screens in the classroom, in the field, or at home, these colorful visuals, dynamic presentations, and encyclopedic environmental resources can stimulate sustained exploration of environmental content, problem-solving skills, and citizen action.
In several places throughout this document, suggestions of activities for workshops with teachers are described. Please feel free to adapt them for your training situation.