The Digital Hedge School Project: Challenges and Opportunities within a Multi-Generational Partnership
Sarah Knight (NUI Galway), Jenny Beale (Brigit's Garden, Roscahill, Co. Galway), Tony Hall (NUI Galway), Veronica McCauley (NUI Galway)
Abstract
The Digital Hedge School Project (DHSP), established in 2006, is a multi-generational environmental education project involving community, student, and third level institutional partnerships. The Galway based project team includes three partners from the National University of Ireland, Galway (the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), the School of Education, and the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI)), Galway’s Presentation Secondary School, and the non-profit environmental education project Brigit’s Garden, located in Roscahill, Co. Galway. The team have worked closely with each other, and with a number of primary schools and third-level environmental science students, to develop three main aspects of the DHSP:
(i) The design of a new programme, on the subject of habitat investigation, for primary school groups visiting Brigit’s Garden. The programme uses concept building games, a variety of on-site sensory activities, and digital cameras to examine and document specific species within each habitat explored. It includes both pre- and post-garden visits to the classroom.
(ii) The creation of an on-line, interactive, 3-D habitat map (the Digital Hedge) of Brigit’s Garden. "Brigit’s Virtual Garden", created in the internet-based programme Second Life, is used as a scaffolding tool within the classroom for schools taking part in the DHSP. The children involved in the school visits as in (i) above, work towards the larger project of helping the DHSP team to build the information and image database of Brigit’s Virtual Garden.
(iii) The construction of an 8 week transition year programme focusing on training in environmental peer education. The transition year students involved in the DHSP, work with both the project team, and the primary school students, to deliver the primary school programme as in (i) above, and to further the development of Brigit’s Virtual Garden.
The DHSP partners have each provided a unique and distinct contribution to the development, and continued implementation, of the project. The initial partnership evolved naturally to most recently include Presentation Secondary School, whose science teacher and transition year co-ordinator are committed to the continual involvement of their transition year students. Additional temporary partnerships, such as the one formed with a particular primary school class who provided important feedback during the design stage of Brigit’s Virtual Garden, have been formed to fill a need of the programme and to further involve the community.
As researchers, teachers, community providers, and multiple generations of students have come together to work on the DHSP, numerous novel learning opportunities have been provided. These opportunities, the corresponding challenges of working within such an expansive partnership, and the successes of the project and partnership will be discussed.
*Additional Authors: Dolores Keegan, Siobhan Dervan and Bernie Crawford.
