The Environmental Center

Outdoor education is an active academic discipline.

Melody Pickle, a Ph. D candidate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, is in the process of writing her dissertation. She posted in the Google Outdoor Education Group. Melody writes:

I am studying how writing is practiced, understood, and valued by outdoor experiential educators in diverse settings. Please take the following 10-minute survey to help with this research study. (Anyone who studies, teaches, or is otherwise actively involved in outdoor education will be a help to this study)

I’m going to see if Melody will join us for a podcast interview. Her study intrigues us and we certainly have a diverse facility, program and target audiences. Since we’ve started the blog and this large social media Web site, writing is - of course - on our minds. I hope she’ll join us. Stay tuned.

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There are other sites providing terrific information for outdoor education programs. We want to interact with, and learn from, them all.

One resource that I particularly enjoy is Google’s Outdoor Education Group.

Recent posts address issues like “…advice on assisting a wheelchair bound spina-bifida patient access (to) a flying fox platform?” Now, where else are you going to find answers to a question like that? :)

We know, of course, as we have our treehouse and high adventure ropes course with adaptation to accomplish this very task. We also have miles of nature trails (some over the water) adapted for wheelchairs.

Other posts address questions about teacher training, other outdoor education blogs and jobs.

Check out Google’s Outdoor Education Group. I think you’ll enjoy it.

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On March 1 four Camp ASCCA staff members successfully completed training in stream bioassessment. Bioassessment is the use of living organisms, in this case macroinvertebrates, to determine the water quality of streams.

Josh Rhodes, Director of Environmental Education, along with Heather White, Nathan Waters, and Tom Collier all completed the training. They were joined by three other participants from the Lake Martin area. All of these participants are now certified to collect stream data as well as teach the Living Streams program, which is an integral part of the environmental program at camp. The training was conducted by Dr. Bill Deutsch and two of his students from Auburn University and was assisted by Dick Bronson of Lake Martin Lake Watch. Tommy Futral, Tallapoosa County Extension Agent, played a key role in setting up the session as well as assisting in the training. The five hour training took place at Camp ASCCA and included sessions in the Dunn Environmental Center as well as hands on training in two on site streams.

The training should come in very handy as camp has eight different groups scheduled to do environmental programs this spring over sixteen days. The Living Streams program and/or pond study will be taught to each group.

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