Bringing Nature to Kids through Technology
For this assignment I decided to look at the idea of using technology to help children experience nature. All three of the articles/ videos that I examined encompass the themes of nature, technobiophilia, and transliteracy.
In his TED talk “A teacher growing green in the South Bronx”, teacher Stephen Ritz talks about how he and his students teamed with Green Living Technologies, a company that develops technology for green roofs and green walls, in order to build an indoor edible wall in their South Bronx classroom. Green Living’s technology allows plants to grown in an urban setting, both inside and outside. Ritz states that the edible wall allowed all of his students to participate in this farming exercise. He says, “I wanted to figure out how I could get this kind of success into something small, like this, and bring it into my classroom so that handicapped kids could do it, kids who didn't want to be outside could do it, and everyone could have access…And lo and behold, we gave birth to the first edible wall in New York City” (Ritz, Jan. 2012). The food the students grew was served to students and teachers in the school cafeteria. Students were also encouraged to graze directly off the wall whenever they wanted. They had access to fresh vegetables during school hours that they grew themselves.
Ritz’s students were so inspired by their green wall, that they went on to build and design more walls and roofs, and they got paid for their efforts. Ritz discusses one case, which seems to embody technobiophilia, where his students designed and installed a green wall on the John Hancock building in Boston. Ritz states that “And my kids, from the poorest congressional district in America, became the first to install a green wall, designed by a computer, with real-live learning tools, 21 stories up” (Ritz, Jan. 2012). Some of Ritz’s students have become licensed Green Living installers, and have gone onto work with contractors in their neighborhood who build affordable housing. Through this introduction to green technology, and what they have learned about growing food, Ritz’s students have been able to transform their neighborhood, their school, and their future.
In her Ted talk “Using tech to enable dreaming” Shilo Shiv Suleman also discusses how children can use technology to enhance their experience with nature. Suleman states that she felt that technology was killing imagination. She felt that cellphones and digital cameras had “stopped us from dreaming. They stopped us from being inspired. And so I jumped…into this world of technology, to see how I could use it to enable magic as opposed to kill it” (Suleman, Dec. 2011).
Suleman did this by designing an interactive iPad app called Khoya, which allows children to become immersed in a digital fantasy adventure story. She states that she realized that the iPad was the perfect storytelling device – a transmedia storytelling device – because it could connect readers all over the world, plus the device can tell the way it’s being held, and it has a GPS so it can tell where the reader lives. She states that digital storytelling allows for transliteracy because “It brings together image and text and animation and sound and touch. Storytelling is becoming more and more multi-sensorial” (Suleman, Dec. 2011). In terms of technobiophilia, as part of the interactive digital story, readers are asked to go outside and take pictures with their iPad of nature – like flowers or leaves - and upload the photos online, where they can share with other readers around the world. Suleman states that “now with mobile technology, we can actually take our children outside into the natural world with their technology.” (Suleman, Dec. 2011). She feels that we are moving towards a world where nature and technology are becoming closer, stating that “We're bringing our children and ourselves closer to the natural world and that magic and joy and childhood love that we had through the simple medium of a story” (Suleman, Dec. 2011).
In her article “Get Your Students Outside With Technology”, Patty McGinnis discusses how technology, students and nature can be a ‘winning combination’. McGinnis writes how the creation on an interpretive trail helped her students interact with nature while using technology to “create a product that would be beneficial to the community” (McGinnis, p.59, 2014). This exercise allowed her students to become transliterate because it “addressed many 21st-century learning skills while making learning relevant and providing students with an authentic audience for their work” (McGinnis, p.59, 2014). Students were tasked with creating numbered posts that contained a quick response (QR) code to be placed along a nature trail. A QR code contains an embedded URL, that when scanned with a smart phone takes the user to a student created Web site. Each student made their own QR codes and created their own Web sites which contained text information, photos and student created videos explaining different points of interest along the trail.
During this exercise, students were required to become familiar with different types of technology, along with their life-sciences course content. Students were placed into small working groups, and each group had to record their point of interest along the trail on Google Sites. McGinnis explains that “Students were made editors of the site, which enabled them to add information about their point of interest to their page” (McGinnis, p.60, 2014). Students were encouraged to use "text, images, podcasts and videos when discussing their points of interest” (McGinnis, p.59, 2014) on their sites, plus they learned how to place a marker on their point of interest on Google Maps. This exercise seems like a great example also of Dr. Sue Thomas’s definition of technobiophilia, because students were encouraged to “achieve a ‘tech-nature’ balance through practical experiments designed to enhance…digital lives indoors, outdoors, and online” (Thomas, July 2013).
My Delicious site is: https://delicious.com/nawoods
References:
McGinnis, P. (2014). GET YOUR STUDENTS OUTSIDE WITH TECHNOLOGY!. Science Scope, 37(7), 58-64.
Ritz, S. (2012). A teacher growing green in South Bronx. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_ritz_a_teacher_growing_green_in_the_south_bronx
Suleman, S. (2011). Using tech to enable dreaming. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/shilo_shiv_suleman_using_tech_to_enable_dreaming?quote=1330
Thomas, S. (2013). Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace. Retrieved from http://suethomasnet.wordpress.com/technobiophilia/
