GREENFIRE - All Comments

re: Future Trends in Outdoor Education

borntolearn — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:44:11 GMT

Hi.

I'm korean adult 39years and appreciated reading your essay above. Korean people are getting oudoor activity familiar but most of people like to bring up their kids inside.

I want to peple to experience the sports in forest and make biz in forest too. Recently French adventure, like tree-top adventure is in vogue over the world and I tried the biz to realize but having difficulty in cultivating the moods against bureauocrats' consevatism concerning safety and conventioal utilization of woods. So, I want more boost for retrying of biz. How about giving me a words of encouragements of just a bit of concern. Bye^_^

re: Future Trends in Outdoor Education

coop_tamu_04 — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:38:28 GMT

How about engaging minorities/lower socioeconomic groups and facilitating them to become leaders? I have noticed that typically it is white males and females, and they typically come from middle to upper class households (as you mentioned, the trainings and certifications are pricey!)

re: Teaching is Listening, Learning is Talking

Joel — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:55:39 GMT

Is there evidence that this is mostly gender specific? As an educator in the public school system, we see consistent success with our female students in the 'sit down and attend a lecture' style of education. The boys seem less successful in this 'traditional classroom'.

re: Why you should care about "twittering"

Jay Roberts — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:09:26 GMT

Katie:

In Tweetdeck, you can click on twitter search in the icon menu bar at the top of your screen. It should give you the option of search terms. You can search for experiential OR education for example. After that, it should show up in your column as a search "group." You can also group together folks that you are following by category. For example, I have a enviro ed category, an experiential ed category, and a climate change category.

Another powerful twitter device is the "hash." If you post and search using the "#" sign, it basically does the search using those terms. For example, if I have tweeted on something useful to outdoor ed I will end it with #education #outdoor.

Hope that helps. Keep the questions coming!

re: Why you should care about "twittering"

bfabel_nols — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:36:46 GMT

I agree, Twitter is a great communication and social networking tool. Tweetdeck is the best platform I have found to organize the Tweeting clutter. I manage both a personal (brianfabel) and Wilderness Risk Management Conference (attend_wrmc) Twitter identity.

re: Is "Smart" the new "Green"?

bhensinger — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:54:21 GMT

This is great. Every Friday I post info on my blog about various simple ways we can be "green" in our practices, and I often think "I wish there was a better term." I love this concept of calling it "smart." Thanks for writing this.

re: Is "Smart" the new "Green"?

Brass Hat — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:28:40 GMT

Jay, I've recently read two books, Hot, Flat & Crowded and Green Hell. Truth be told, I found that most of the "findings" in the former either are or will be bunk. There some very good points about technology, but this country and its politics aren't even close to making green technology affordable for a tenth of our National population let alone the world. And my opinion is not based on reading the latter, but more so from many sources including many overseas publications. From CF bulbs (and their inherent hazardous chemicals) to the C02 monsters in China, India, Mexico and most of Eastern Europe, there's much to be done and it should not come at the expense of the US. The US, There are too many groups looking to cash in on the movement, too many policies that sound and feel good-but lack real substance-and too many uninformed, well intentioned mind you, people. Again, we do what we can as individuals.

re: Why you should care about "twittering"

katiemacaulay@earthlink.net — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:28:31 GMT

Hi Jay,

I took your advice and downloaded Tweetdeck. I did a search on outdoor education and founf 88 results. The only problem is I don;t know how to access them, and there is no help for the program that I have found. Any tips appreciated!

Thanks, Katie

re: Is "Smart" the new "Green"?

Jay Roberts — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:04:12 GMT

Brass Hat:

I agree with you 100% We have to move beyond the "green police" mode of judging others based on the degree to which they are (or are not) green. In addition, we all know the adage about living in a glass house... The trick, it seems to me, is finding a way to make a movement inclusive, flexible, and effective all at the same time.

re: Is "Smart" the new "Green"?

Brass Hat — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:04:20 GMT

I like the content and attitude of this. Your idealism of ridding ourselves of societies burden of cliche buzzwords is important. And the understanding that smart technologies equates to responsible individual "smart" living is in the ten ring. However, I, for one, think that those who consider themselves as over the top smart greenies are indulgent to the point that they are too elite for the rest of us that do what we can. Point being, all those who think they're all over the green movement, beware, you're just making yourselves and your case look less credible because of your attitude and more often than not, your hypocracy.

re: Can't We All Just Get Along?

BradBarron — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:32:03 GMT

I would agree with this as well, the Outdoor Retailers do a very good job of this. At their Southeast show, I know you can see everything from backpacks to greeting cards to snowboards (and plenty of silly stuff in between). The key for them is an over-arching body that manages the whole thing (http://www.eora.org/). I think the major issue here with Outdoor/Experiential Ed would be that organizations in our field are already established. Whereas these reps came together and started something totally new in order to satisfy a need, this field would be dealing with associations who already have an established history. Newton comes to mind....an object in motion... :)

I'll be at the AEE-SE regional conference this weekend. I was on the council as a student. I'll try to remember to bring it up. I can say that as a region, we have been working towards this by at the very least promoting other regional happenings within the AEE conference. I believe we actually changed/cancelled some scheduled activities one year in order to allow room for another group's event. I understand that isn't exactly what you are after, but I feel it represents a step towards cooperation.

re: Is Wilderness a Useful Environmental Ideal Anymore?

BradBarron — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:23:30 GMT

I think you make some very interesting points. While I would hate to see the loss of defined "Wilderness" as given by the 1964 law, I can see the conflict in constantly placing wilderness at a conflict with human impact and at the same time looking to use it for programs and to take as much advantage as possible ourselves as educators while wanting no one else to do the same. I think it also has the potential to allow areas equally as important to miss out on the Wilderness designation because some small amount of impact has taken place at one point or another.

As far as books I would add to the list, I have to say Roderick Frazier Nash's "Wilderness and the American Mind." I would argue that he puts forth a very good case for the idea of wilderness prior to the Romantic movement. The notion that wilderness had value other than for lumber and farmland certainly matured during the romantic period, but Nash details a relationship with wilderness that began well before Romantic writers got a hold of it.

re: Is Wilderness a Useful Environmental Ideal Anymore?

St. Louis Rams — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:15:22 GMT

Yes I think it is! Great post by the way

re: Together in 2012: Why we need an association merger in Outdoor/Experiential Education

Leigh Jackson-Magennis — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:21:20 GMT

I think we are a big and diverse community, often times having different needs/benefiting from different conferences. However, I do believe that many of us are torn when it comes to budget cuts and making these choices. I would and do attend at least two of the aforementioned conferences each year, but it would be nice to have a large conference until the economy has an upturn. It would be interesting to see whether or not folks would feel that they had enough workshops specific to their needs...but the social night life would be great. I think the conference would need to be longer, at a big venue, and I think this would be the year to try it. It may not work, but why not try?

Leigh Jackson-Magennis

re: Together in 2012: Why we need an association merger in Outdoor/Experiential Education

Outdoor Ed — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:52:32 GMT

Genevieve, great point. One of the things that I think the entire field can do is to share more on the Web. Conferences, while really important, only happen once a year. What about the other 360-some days? Sites like OutdoorEd.com let us exchange ideas and information all year long. And with the economy, people and programs have less funds to go to conferences making the Web the best place to gather.

Rick Curtis