Using the Internet to Enhance EE Capacity Building
By Richard Wenn, WestEd and Abby Ruskey, NEEAP
The Environmental Education Advocate - Spring/Summer 1999
The following information is provided to you as a service of the National
Environmental Education Advancement Project (NEEAP). We encourage you to use it and
please credit the National Environmental Education
Advancement Project where appropriate.
Educational efforts are aimed at the exchange of knowledge, a process that can happen naturally between a small group of people, but requires the use of technology as the audience grows.
Since Socrates elevated his students on the marble steps of Greece people have been using technology to share and exchange knowledge. In the last few hundred years, as the population has increased, our communication media has evolved with us to meet the challenge.
Photo: Kathleen MacKinnon |
| Su Beran (MN), and Bob Murphy (TX) utilize the computers, supplied by WestEd Labs, at the 1999 NEEAP/NAAEE Spring Leadership Clinic to communicate with folks back home. Jeff Ledermann (MN) and Sue Bumpous (TX) look on as their team members use the available technology to reach other EE leaders in their respective states. |
The World Wide Web has recently taken a prominent place in this process. Any organized group of children or adults, with modest computer resources, can now publish and share information with the world’s increasing population of Internet based computer users. Creating a web site does not require the capital-intensive resources of a television studio, a printing press or a broadcasting tower, yet the effort can potentially reach hundreds of thousands of people.
Applications to EE Capacity Building
The World Wide Web combined with email is an excellent organizing and publishing tool for state-based environmental education efforts. Environmental educators are currently using the web to better coordinate programs by bringing busy volunteers together electronically. Teachers are keeping up to date with electronic event calendars and online courses are on the horizon. Organizations are reaching out to larger audiences by publishing program information, making experiences available to students through electronic field trips, publishing research, and developing catalogs of resources and programs.
This year NEEAP and EdGateway worked collaboratively to develop a "Virtual Leadership Clinic" and an informational web page for the NEEAP/NAAEE Spring Leadership Clinic pre-clinic preparation and post-clinic follow-up. The Virtual Clinic allowed participants, unable to attend in Albuquerque, the opportunity to provide input and be updated "on the spot". The EE Barter Network is another collaborative EE capacity building project involving NEEAP, WestEd and the Utah Society for EE. The EE Barter Network will connect organizations with specific organizational or programmatic needs with other organizations and/or individuals with expertise.
The following web sites are key starting points to finding out more about EE capacity building opportunities on the Web:
EdGateway (http://www.edgateway.net/)
NEEAP (http://neeap.uwsp.edu/)
EE Link (http://eelink.net/)
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