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Presentation given by Dave Conover, education director, Clearwater, during the 2011 Teaching the Hudson Valley Summer Institute, Place & The Digital Native: Using Technology & Social Media to Teach the Hudson Valley
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Extending the Impact of Field Trip Programs
Teaching the Hudson Valley - July 26, 2011
More screen time, please!
• Most kids watch an electronic screen over 7 hours per day.
• Obesity.• Depression.• Promotes detachment.• Electronic companionship.• Fatigue/ADHD.• Repetitive stress injury (gamer’s thumb!).
NCLI Act
Philosophy of Education
• Clearwater believes that experiential programs, including field trips, enhance learning in the classroom.
• Direct experience helps turn abstract concepts into concrete learning.
• Field programs can get students excited about learning.
Clearwater and the “spiral curriculum”
Noted educator Jerome Bruner coined the term “spiral curriculum” in 1960 in his landmark book The Process of Education.
It was a part of a paradigm shift in educational philosophy that centered around four core ideas:
1. How learning and teaching are structured is at least as important as the concepts being taught.
2. Almost any idea or concept can be taught at any age.
3. Intuition is as important as analytical thinking in the learning process.
4. Getting students interested in the subject by turning passive spectators into active learners is very important. “Knowing is a process, not a product.”
Mystic Whaler and Clearwater
Sloop Clearwater Named to National Register of Historic Places
PIER 40, NYC—May 13, 2004. The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater has been added to the National Register of Historic Places for its national significance to the American environmental movement during the past three decades.
• Boat programs on the sloop Clearwater and schooner Mystic Whaler
• Tideline shore programs
• Classroom visits
• Camp Clearwater
• Green Cities program
• Public Sails and Festivals
Education Programs
Clearwater’s Internet Tools
• YouTube Channel
• LinkedIn Estuary Link
• Clearwater’s website-resources, blogs, links Skype (video phone)
Estuary Link
Connecting kids from downriver to kids upriver through distance learning.
Beczak Center field program, Yonkers, NY
Clearwater program, Ulster Park, NY
Samples taken from one site can be shared with students at the other site. The same for field data. Here, comparing male and female blue crabs.
Estuary Link- two sites 70 miles apart on the Hudson River.
As seen on TV!
HRECOS
Live Hudson River data and lesson plans. A great way to extend a Hudson River field trip.
Clearwater website
• HRECOS tutorial
• Videos and powerpoints
• Blogs detailing experiences on the sloop.
• Links to Hudson River resources
Striped Bass
• Clearwater lesson plan about striped bass using HRECOS and data from the DEC’s Hudson River Fisheries Unit.
Is there a connection between the Hudson River and Greenland?
Can technology help extend the impact of a field experience?
Hudson-Greenland Connection
Sloop as Chalkboard
• Educator Chris Bowser draws a sturgeon on the deck of the Clearwater. He then offers the chalk to the visiting kids from Greenland so they can draw an animal they encounter in their waters.
Hudson-Greenland Connection
• PCBs from the industrialized world have contaminated Arctic food webs.
• Kids in the Arctic often have high “body burdens” of toxic chemicals.
• A melting Greenland has also made traditional life hard there.
• A melting Greenland will have an impact on a Hudson River that is only a few feet above sea level.
Greenland or bust
Greenland students came to visit the Hudson, now I go visit them in Greenland and try to set up a Skype connection between them and Pete Seeger in Beacon.
It worked! Pete and the Greenland kids sang to each other via Skype and reconnected.
