Tuesday, August 3, 2010: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM
317-318, David L Lawrence Convention Center
OOS 14 - Ecology Education in 2020 -- Integrating New Technologies with Mother Nature
From bar codes, tablet computers and mobile phones to online shopping, video games and crowd sourcing, all aspects of life, including language, social standards and family vacations, are being quickly transformed by the wide adoption of electronic technologies. These same technologies are transforming the ways scientists undertake their work and the ways teachers interact with their students. What do these changes mean for ecological education? On the one hand, the “No Child Left Inside Act” from Congress results from the sense that we are producing a generation of TV zombies, video gamers, and Facebook addicts who pay little or no attention to the natural world. Parents and educators wonder how this generation can learn to appreciate the organisms and processes that maintain the health of our environment with limited experience out-of-doors. On the other hand, new technologies are bringing representations of incredible environments from around the globe to students in real time and giving them unprecedented access to images, videos, ecological data, primary literature and experts. In the near future, people will be able to take an entire digital library, including numerous field guides and keys, to their field sites. Furthermore, technologies are being used to better accommodate the range of learning styles among students and to alter the ways that instructors deliver course materials and form learning communities. Already much as changed. Teachers make their own web sites using sophisticated tools that provide students course materials, assignments and grades at any time from almost anywhere. On-line approaches allow students to take courses when they want and at their own paces. For-profit companies now provide students a relative easy way to receive advanced degrees and advance their careers from the students’ own home. And many institutions of higher learning have opened their courses for distance learners. The rate of communication technologies continues to change rapidly and undoubtedly so will education practice. This session looks at changes that involve advances in pedagogical strategies, multimedia communication access to information and information tools, mobile computing and multimedia communication.
Organizer:Robert D. Stevenson, University of Massachusetts
Moderator:Margaret Lowman, North Carolina State University
8:00 AMOOS 14-1CANCELLED - Pre and post assessment: Change in teaching practice based on data
Prassede Calabi, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Andrew Shtulman, Occidental College
8:20 AMOOS 14-2Ecomuve - promoting ecosystems science learning via multi-user virtual environments
Amy M. Kamarainen, Harvard University, Shari Metcalf, Harvard University, Chris Dede, Harvard University, Tina A. Grotzer, Harvard University
8:40 AMOOS 14-3Educational innovation: Projects and opportunities supported by NSF
Hannah Sevian, National Science Foundation
9:00 AMOOS 14-4Linking mathematical and computational science with ecology education
Louis J. Gross, University of Tennessee
9:20 AMOOS 14-5Emerging learning technologies: Implications for ecosystems science education
Chris Dede, Harvard University
9:40 AM Break
9:50 AMOOS 14-6The networked naturalist - mobile devices for citizen science
Eric A. Graham, University of California, Los Angeles
10:10 AMOOS 14-7Environmental learning and mobile computing
Dale Joachim, MIT
10:30 AMOOS 14-8Teaching general education ecological science: The importance and impact of experiential activities
Andrei L. Israel, The Pennsylvania State University, Erica A.H. Smithwick, The Pennsylvania State University
10:50 AMOOS 14-9Internalizing the environment: Using short stories to foster comprehension and personal appreciation of ecological concepts
David R. Bowne, Elizabethtown College
11:10 AMOOS 14-10Images for humanity, science and the environment: Connecting multiple audiences to nature through photography
Molly Steinwald, Miami University, A. John Bailer, Miami University, Richard E. Lee Jr., Miami University

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See more of The 95th ESA Annual Meeting (August 1 -- 6, 2010)