From Screens to Streams:
Technology Driven Strategies to Get Elementary Students Interested and Into in Nature Touro University California By Jeremy Smith Given the current social patterns related to the amount of time kids in general, but especially our majority of minority students, are spending outdoors versus indoors on screens, I think there is a way schools might shift their educational focus and goals to integrate an increased awareness of and interaction with the outside world. This is increasingly vital for the stewardship of our environment. Because screens are not going away, the shift in school focus leverages technological devices to increase student motivation to get into nature and interact with it. The project I plan to do with my students is a small part of this big idea, but I hope it provides insights into how it might be done. Abstract Key Words Introduction National State Local Statement of the Problem Background and Need Purpose of the Project Goal/Purpose of the Study Methodology Study Design Data Analysis and Interpretation Table 1 Table 2 Etc Recommendations and Summary References While my own personal experience as a parent of a “tech savvy” 15 yer old son has had a lot to do with my interest in children’s use of technology, I think my choice for this topic of investigation started several years ago during parent teacher conferences at Calistoga Elementary School. When I asked parents, “What is your main concern for your child?”, parents invariably responded with something to the effect of: “I’m worried about the amount of screen time my child is engaged in”. All the while, I have had to explain to parents that their children are increasingly using screens in the classroom as well. Our school recently adopted a “one laptop per child” policy which has shifted our pedagogical focus toward the increased use of laptops as a source of curriculum and instructional techniques and strategies. This parent concern I have been hearing for the past several years reflects the findings of one recent national study which shows that while more than four-fifths (83%) of parents questioned in the United States think it is important for their children to learn to use technology, nine out of ten would prefer them to spend their childhood outdoors, developing a connection with nature. In another recent study, almost all (96%) of the 1,001 parents with children aged between four and 14 quizzed for the National Trust thought it was important that their children had a connection with nature and thought playing outdoors was important for their development. (XXXXThe Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/27/children-spend-only-half-the-time-playing-outside-as-their-parents-did). Despite these near unanimously expressed concerns among academics and parents, the amount of time children spend indoors and on screens has increased dramatically in the past several decades. It’s estimated now that children spend half as much time playing outdoors as indoors as their parents did. The National Wildlife Federation estimates that children spend half an hour a day outdoors, but 7 hours a day in front of video screens playing games, watching TV, and spending time on the computer. (XXXXhttps://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/03/outdoors) These activities are linked with the rise in childhood obesity, ADHD, vitamin deficiency, and general social/emotional wellbeing. A 2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that one-third of children and teens, ages 2 to 19, were overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. By 2010, about half of school-age children in North and South America will be overweight or obese, predicts an article in the (XXXXInternational Journal of Pediatric Obesity (Vol. 1, No. 1). More here…) Now we are in 2020, and something feels profoundly wrong, here. Because concurrently in schools, as teachers get used to the new one laptop per child technology, the hours students spend on screens in the classroom is also on the rise. (XXXX Is there a study to show this?) As an educator, I’ve always understood that my main role is not to ensure kids are educated, but that they are, first and foremost, kept safe and healthy. I feel like I have been failing my students in this most fundamental of tasks. (Studies show how today’s kids have a lower life expectancy than we do.) I fear that in this new technological and environmentally challenged World we are living in, our current educational model is actually having a detrimental effect on children. It could also be bad for the environment as kids become more disconnected from the world around them and into digital screen based worlds. As educators, focus must be on children’s health first, because the possibility of learning depends, after all, on their safety, health, and social wellbeing. In doing so, we would also be helping the environment through increased awareness and interaction with outdoor spaces. Many recent studies have shown that this common parent and educator fear is indeed backed up by science. In the health field, numerous studies have shown, (XXXXapa), that being outdoors more is linked to the following benefits, as determined by, for example: https://www.nwf.org/en/Kids-and-Family/Connecting-Kids-and-Nature/Health-Benefits-and-Tips (The following was cut and pasted from the Internet to maintain a direction, but not to plagiarize): Body
The good news is, studies have shown that increasing awareness of our natural environment leads to attitudes which bode well for its protection. (XXXXX find it again) While it is popular to blame technology for kids’ decreasing outdoor play time, it is not the only reason why this phenomenon is happening. For one, the increasing homework load kids have had over the past decades has reduced their time for outdoor play. (XXXX). It’s also been observed that parent attitudes and fears around unstructured, outdoor play have influenced the amount of time children spend outside. Mass shootings, coupled with our fear-based media that disproportionately amplifies such occurrences, have had a huge effect here. Not to say mass shootings are not, in fact, on the rise, of course. A specific concern in the community of Calistoga is that the majority of our students, (85%), are minority students who qualify for free/reduced lunch. The academic benefits for these students that come from the use of technology are well known. The use of technology in the classroom has specifically been shown to reduce achievement gaps in reading scores for English language learners. (XXXX) However, other studies show how and why minority students are underrepresented in outdoor programs. (XXX) In Calistoga families are increasingly fearful of ICE immigration officials detaining people in the community. Last year the story children told me is that “la migra” was in Calistoga looking to detain people. People have been “hiding” indoors to avoid contact with authorities. This is not to say that our families do not want their kids to have more outdoor play. In fact, my experience during the past three years as the teacher representative in the Spanish speaking parent group or, ELAC. has made me aware of the community's desire for more outdoor spaces for their children. Our local Spanish speaking parents began, without school input, an outdoor spaces initiative. They feel that there are not enough outdoor spaces in Calistoga. To address this problem, they developed their own committee to study the possibility of securing an exercise course, a picnic area, a soccer field, and a skate park. The group is called Adelante, which in Spanish means “forward”, or “ahead”. They have presented their plan to the local school board and town government. Unfortunately, they meet on Wednesday nights, so I’m out of these meetings until I finish this masters program. The last I heard, they secured funding for the picnic area and “ropes course”. I need to check in to see how this project is coming along. As I continue to read studies on these themes, I’m becoming more curious about the impact that the residency status of families has on kids’ ability to get outdoors and into natural spaces. Minority students already have challenges due to the economic and time constraints of their working parents. If we also consider the fears of coming into contact with immigration authorities, I suspect, the challenges to getting out of the house are increased. Compared to the 50’s, 60’s, and even 70’s and 80’s, when the common experience was for kids to go outdoors to play after school until sundown, most kids now go shut themselves into their houses. A telling quote here comes from the seminal work on kids’ interaction with the environment, called “Last Child in the Woods”, by Richard Louv. When asked why he prefers to play indoors, a child simply and honestly states, “It’s where all the electrical outlets are”. (Go on here, ...more studies and facts.) And yet while parents, educators, and researchers recognize that outdoor play and exploration is profoundly beneficial to children’s health, we also recognize that screen based technology is not going away anytime soon. It’s projected that...(XXXXapa) Thankfully, there is no denying that despite these concerns, technology in the hands of children has proven to have many educational benefits. For example, (XXXX,apa). Importantly, it has proven effective in closing achievement gaps among “English Language Learners”, and their “Other Language Learners” counterparts. (XXXX Can I use the Touro study done in Calistoga by one of our retired teachers for this one?) Proposal: Educators are faced with a new social, technological and environmental landscape that requires them to adapt their educational model in a fundamental way. At home, students are increasingly on-line and on screens at hourly levels that are unhealthy. In addition, the content children consume on screens at home is often violent. The two genres of “first person shooter” and “adventure” games make up around 50% of all video games sold, followed by role playing, sport, adventure, fighting, racing, strategy, and other genres. Notwithstanding, parents, out of a variety of fears, have reduced their childrens’ ability to be outside in unstructured environments. One proposal would be to flip the focus of schools onto outdoor learning environments. Schools necessarily shift their focus to provide more healthy outdoor play and learning activities that kids no longer get at home. I like the term “flip” because our schools’ role takes on the traditional role that outdoor after school time used to have for kids. Because the use of technology in classrooms has been proven to have many educational benefits, especially for English language learners, technology would still be used, but in ways that encourage outdoor learning. This proposal also leverages the technology use already going on in homes. Students complete lessons from school on their in-home devices. Inversely, schools reduce the amount of in-class screen time. If they are having more unstructured recess time, taking care of school gardens, and going on more hikes to the local parks and trails during school, kids would also be charged with using their devices at home, hence, homework, (their screen time), to complete related assignments. They bring their individual experiences and thoughts into the classroom through written assignments, photos, videos, audio recordings, etc. They bring them to class through digital platforms and create a shared community in the classroom. This shift could lead to increased awareness of the environment, which is vital for our society. It would also lead to improved mental, social, and physical health of our children. Given their institutionally structured nature, schools are, I believe, equally if not better equipped/positioned than families to ensure kids get the necessary amount of safe, outdoor, unstructured playtime that they need to develop in a healthy and socially and environmentally beneficial manner, while at the same time ensuring that their in-home screen time is dedicated toward more creative, constructive, and generally positive learning. The school shift in technology use needs to be re-directed toward student and environmental health, sustainability, and general wellbeing. All this points to a profound re-positioning of the role of schools in child education. They will increasingly need to become places where children are engaged in unstructured play and interaction with the natural world. It happens in a safe, structured, teacher-guided environment, where parents feel it’s safe for them to explore outdoor environments. Using tech tools at home also plays into the recent trend in education where people are increasingly learning in non-traditional and technology assisted, independent contexts. We are learning tech tools on our own to satisfy professional and communication needs. (More here…) A lesson/project in a school like this might look like the following: “Take a walk with a parent or a friend. Use a phone/camera to take a picture of a plant or animal from your house or outside. (It can be a pet!) Send the picture to your teacher through Class Dojo, etc. We’ll present it in class on (day; time (weekly)).” Or, “Ask a family member to download from the app store iNaturalist or iNaturalist Seek. (etc..)Take pictures with your app and tell us what plants and animals you identified with the help of this app. We will share your findings with the class on (day of week) Ongoing collection of local plant and animal species photos and information would lead to group or individual reports in a Google Slides format. There are a variety of resources teachers can use to do such a technology based nature project. “What if?” questions: Can schools create assignments that ask kids to go explore outdoor spaces, given safety and insurance concerns? Can parent waiver forms be used? (Even so, if they still had to be inside, they’d be using their indoor screen time doing classwork instead of video games exclusively.) Can schools afford to procure and let kids take handheld devices home? Also, in order to involve parents, are the apps in Spanish? A family outreach program might include education that encourages and teaches parents to get outdoors and interact with their kids more often. So far, my research project plan is to look at my third grade students’ experiences on two outdoor field trips, one in the fall and another in the spring, to the 3,200 acre Pepperwood Preserve. Our Title 1 school receives funding to participate in their SCENIQ program, which trains students on environmental inquiry. Through a year-long, nine hour program that includes visits to Pepperwood in the fall and spring and a school-based lesson in the winter, classes participate in hands-on grade-level specific activities. Students record written and visual observations in creative bilingual nature journals. Students practice discovery skills, learn to support their ideas with evidence, and gain knowledge of our local environment. SCENIQ was one of the first environmental education programs to be accepted to Sonoma County’s Upstream Investment Portfolio. The Portfolio is a select collection of local, evidence-based programs proven to help eliminate poverty in Sonoma County and ensure equal opportunity for quality education. The program promotes the Next Generation Science Standards, which aim to eliminate the practice of “teaching to the test.” Instead, they shift the focus from merely memorizing scientific facts to actually doing science—so students spend more time posing questions and discovering the answers for themselves. SCENIQ is aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards and puts students in the science driver’s seat. My action research will be done with my 3rd grade class of 22 students. The inquiry will set up our two trips to use, in the fall, a traditional, non-technologically assisted experience in nature; and in the spring, an experience which will include the use of iPads, smart phones, or digital cameras. In both formats, students will be asked to comment on their observations with three writing prompts: I notice… I wonder… and, It reminds me of. As an extension activity, students will use the data they discovered in the field to create reports. The first report will be in a traditional, handwritten and arts/crafts style format. The second will be a slideshow in Google Slides. I’m interested to see how technology might enhance student motivation and success in Pepperwood’s three main focus areas: to practice discovery skills, learn to support their ideas with evidence, and gain knowledge of our local environment. The second trip/experience is really open right now to exploration. A lot depends on my own learning curve in using tech devices with kids. Data collection Informal observations of the kids in nature Nature Reports (quality and depth of information) Thoughts about the experience the experience questionnaire A corollary question for me is how the use of tech in nature might alter kids’ experience of nature. Do kids get more or less out of the experience in terms of motivation, understanding, (insights), reporting, and further study? On the tech side. Does the camera or video device limit a child’s perception of things in nature due to its “click and done” style of observing and capturing, or does it focus it in a lead to further questioning and understanding? On the nature journal side, do kids perceive more in a direct, first person non-tech experience in nature when they slow down enough in order to draw what they see in a detailed manner? Should we focus on teaching this way of interacting with nature? Is it developmentally appropriate? Is the use of tech devices to interact with record nature more suited to children than nature journals? (XXXX I read something about this. apa needed.) Because on our first outing to the creek the kids were so excited turning over rocks that they did not want to slow down to draw anything. This can be structured in a lesson. It goes into the realm of teaching mindfulness to kids, which is also a big theme. I suspect in the interest of balance we would want to do both. Another query is: In a social-emotional sense, do kids demonstrate different behaviors with their peers outdoors when the tech is there or not there? Finally, does the use of tech devices for these purposes increase ELL student learning around concepts and language? Also, can we show that any of this has an impact on test scores, (which ones), and/or should we even try to show this? Is our “smarter balanced” test reflective of the new focus this kind of learning proposes? The data might be too stretched to show any of that conclusively, anyway. will the integration of tech devices unlock ELL and specifically newcomer interaction, knowledge, and expression around their experiences?
3 Comments
Evrim
9/29/2019 01:01:14 pm
Ummm.... wow! I'm shocked at all the research you did!! I think I did my assignment so wrong after reading yours. Opps, I guess I'll go back and fix it. But I do agree on the screen time. We need to be tech savy, but yet we need to be parents.
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Joel Kriner
9/30/2019 05:47:15 pm
Fantastic research, I think you hit the nail on the head with regards to excessive screen time and the consideration of how to embrace the "real world" at least in the classroom. I love your picture via Class Dojo idea and would enjoy hearing more about lesson plans that you are considering.
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Tracy Moskowite
10/23/2019 01:24:53 pm
I am amazed this is great. I have recently looked into some research on screens in the classroom and how the retention of doing things on screen is less than doing it on paper and how there is a group of people no longer allowing electronic notes. I wonder how things will progress.
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AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
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