Courses: Undergraduate courses in environmental communication, with crisis communication or public relations variations. Objectives: After completing this unit activity, students will have a better understanding of how communication contributes to the complexity and interconnections of environmental challenges by exploring crisis communication…

General and strategic management courses frequently provide external analysis tools through which students identify, classify, and assess how changes in the general external environment impact industries and firms. In this exercise, we facilitate analysis of the general environment through a popular song from the 1980s. Through analyzing an event…

Although early childhood theorists agree on the importance of spending time in nature and the outdoors, it unfortunately appears that today's young children do not always have sufficient opportunities to experience and strengthen this connection. Lack of time spent in nature, combined with the health issues associated with large quantities of time…

Area should be experienced, not simply calculated. This task invites students to physically experience areas and the spatial relationships between them, as well as their own community.

While students generally understand how humans impact their physical environment, it can be challenging for them to explain how this key geographic theme is "bidirectional." How does the land influence the people and vice versa? This exchange is what creates a sense of place for every spot on our planet. Being so physically and…

Discover what happens when your students step out of their daily routines and activate their engagement. Author Katherine Mills Hernandez argues that movement, talk, and the physical environment of the classroom all contribute and influence students' learning. The ideas in "Activate" will help you create a classroom optimized for deeper…

This article aims to clarify the concept of context. Our motivation is the lack of consensus on what context is, despite common accept of the claim that learning is context-dependent to some degree, and despite a widespread interest in researching learning in specific contexts such as museums, classrooms, or workplace settings. We provide a…

Learning about people from long ago and far away poses a challenge for students because such people seem so distant and different. The lack of easily comprehensible text-based primary sources compounds this problem. Using a built environment as a primary source makes people from the distant past more accessible, concrete and exciting. Broadly…

Helping people flourish is an organic and unpredictable process. Like a farmer sowing seeds, someone creates conditions for children to grow as creative and critical thinkers. Creativity cannot be taught "directly", but educational practice can provide the means, opportunities and a fertile environment for the creative mind to flourish.…

There is a need to establish and nurture a relationship between urban and suburban students and the natural world. This relationship needs to be personal and immediate. They need to see the wilder life that survives and sometimes flourishes in "their" world--not miles away in the hills and mountains or hidden beneath the sea, but outside…

Five middle school teachers are among the few people wandering around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, squinting at labels describing the plants that will bloom soon. The author and her colleagues are on a reconnaissance mission, trying to plan an interdisciplinary field trip for the seventh grade. They represent different departments--science, math,…

This article examines the role material culture and making items can serve in establishing a sense of place or informing place-based educational practices. It is arranged around six principles that, if used in a learning context, connect material from a place to an enhanced comprehension of a sense of place. A critical component in making the…

Children observe, listen, feel, taste, and take apart while exploring everything in their environment. Teachers can cultivate nature investigations with very young children by offering infants natural objects they can explore and investigate. When adults introduce nature in the earliest stages of development, children will be open to new ideas and…

In the real world, helping infants explore the earth is not always practical. The logistics of enjoying nature with a group of infants and toddlers in a city can be daunting; however, with a few smart policies and wise decisions about health and safety, sharing nature with young children brings rewards that more than make up for the…

Over the next 10 months, five sections of a pack of environmental exercises will be presented (Houses Game, Planning Game, Building Designs, Planning Enquiry, Future Communities). This introduction (which includes instructions and materials for the Houses Game) suggests why such exercises are needed and describes problems they will help with.…