Watershed+Stewarship+through+Hands-on+Exploration+(Nick+Lawrence)

Watershed Stewardship through Hands-on Exploration

The 6th World Environmental Education Congress developed this module among many others released together in one pamphlet. The specific authors of this module are Carlie Wiener, Barbara C. Bruno and Jim Foley.

This specific edition released by the Environmental Congress was focused solely on the ocean and marine life. The overall purpose of the congress is to convene persons who have a stake environmental and sustainability education and have them share their knowledge and experience.

This question is somewhat redundant but the educational mission of the organization is to provide educational material for teachers to use. This particular edition has several articles about teaching about the ocean in the classroom. Also several learning modules are provided. The overall philosophy of the congress is to provide environmental and sustainability knowledge to educators and the public in general.

The object of this module is to teach students the basic mechanics of watersheds and how human pollution travels throughout watersheds. It does this by having students create a model of a watershed and simulating water flow through it. Then sources of pollution are introduced and the students can see how pollution moves throughout their model.

I think this curriculum will easily achieve its learning objectives. Creating a model watershed is a great way to actively involve kids and peak their interest. You give them ability to create their own little world. Then introducing sources of pollution such as food dye and oil and watching it quickly spread throughout the model illustrates quite clearly how pollutants “get around.” Very often in the real pollution in one area affects many different areas. This module serves to illustrate this on small scale.

This is directly aligned with the EcoEd Research Groups teaching objectives. The main purpose of this module is to illustrate the importance of watersheds and how pollution can quickly spread throughout and contaminate an entire watershed. Pollution is a major sustainability problem, especially when it contaminates water sources. Water is becoming an ever decreasing commodity.

There really isn’t anything that can be added to this module to further align it with the EcoEds teaching objectives. Though perhaps some information about how swamps and bogs are very important in filtering pollution out of waterways could be added. This would illustrate the importance of preserving wetlands and show a potential solution to cleaning up water pollution.