[Odonata-l] More on getting people outside

[Pam Hunt]

Thankfully, I work for an environmental non-profit where the 
education folks drag kids (and sometimes their teachers) outside on a 
regular basis - even if it's just the tip of the iceberg (while I, 
one of the biologists, get to sit in my office messing with 
spreadsheets and writing grants - the irony).

My personal experience with this whole issue was through the 
continuing education branch of the University of NH, an entity until 
recently called the "College for Lifelong Learning."  I've been 
teaching a couple of courses (Bird Ecology, Natural History) for them 
for about ten years, and when I do I've included a huge (>50%) field 
component.  After all, most of these students are going on to 
management, business, computer, or other non-science jobs, and this 
might be the only opportunity for many of them to do things like 
taste Indian Cucumber Root or walk in a salt marsh.

Imagine my horror this past winter when the college asked if I'd be 
interested in teaching "Natural History" as an "online" course!  I 
told them in no uncertain terms that teaching such a course remotely 
through the wonders of silicon technology was about as sadly ironic 
as one could get, and politely turned their offer down.  I like to 
think that the other practitioners of our art that may have been 
approached reacted similarly, since I haven't seen "cybernature" (as 
I started calling it) offered anywhere.

I think the situation in this case is at least partially related to 
the difficulties of having part-time students all line up on the same 
schedule, plus a trend at this particularly institution of touting 
their "distance learning" program.  Call me old fashioned, but at 
some point distance learning might as well be accomplished directly 
through Google and Wikipedia, and the rest of us can spend our 
educational opportunities trying that much harder to drag people 
kicking and screaming into the insect-infested swamps to show them 
what's really going on.

Just my two cents,
Pam Hunt
Concord, NH