COME TO TECHNOLOGY

New technology to get students back to nature

Stroll around any university campus, and you're bound to see students text-messaging friends, posting their thoughts on blogs, playing computer games and listening to downloaded music in their free moments. The iPod-Myspace weblog environment is inhabited by a generation that seems to feel more at home in the virtual world than in the natural world. That presents a challenge for instructors of field courses, where sloshing through streams, clambering over rocks and grubbing around in the dirt are as much a part of the educational experience as lectures and blue books.

"When I was in school, we wanted to be in the field," remembers University of Michigan Biological Station director Knute Nadelhoffer. "But now it's harder to get students out of their routines and to make the real world appeal to them."

One way innovative U-M professors are doing that is by linking virtual- and natural-world experiences, combining traditional field instruction with high-tech tools that not only attract and engage students but also help them learn in ways that just aren't possible within the confines of four walls.

Perching on rocky ledges, students at the U-M Geological Sciences Department's Camp Davis Field Station near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, enter data into computer tablets that they wear in shoulder harnesses something like the slings used for carrying babies.

The units they're using, known as GeoPads, were developed at U-M specifically to enhance field education. Combining TabletPC computers designed to withstand outdoor conditions, integrated Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receivers, digital datasets, Geographic Information System (GIS) software and 3-D visualization software, GeoPads allow students in field geology and environmental science courses to record, manipulate, integrate and view their observations, and to map data in ways they never could before.

"The old-fashioned way was to go out with a solid surface on which you can mount maps," says Peter Knoop, a School of Information research investigator who helped develop the GeoPad. "Students would get aerial photos of the area and, printed on transparency paper, a topographic map that they could lay on top of the aerial photo. On top of that, they'd have a piece of Mylar that they could write on. With the GeoPad, we're doing the digital equivalent of that, but with much better and more complete ability to manipulate the information and images." For example, students can rotate the maps to get different views and switch from 2-D to 3-D representations of what they're looking at in the real world.

That's a big advantage in helping students understand how a 2-D map corresponds to the 3-D landscape, a skill that many find difficult to master, says Ben van der Pluijm, a professor of geological sciences who started the project with Knoop through funding from the National Science Foundation, the Hewlett-Packard Foundation and the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Students also can incorporate other information for the area, such as soil characteristics, vegetation patterns or land-use data.

GeoPads can enhance instructional field trips, too, says van der Pluijm. In addition to maps, the units can be loaded with images, such as slides showing the microscopic structure of rocks that students are likely to encounter, satellite imagery or information on landforms and local geology they pass en route to field stops. Knoop and van der Pluijm also are experimenting with using wireless on-the-go technology so that an instructor in one van can point out and comment on interesting features, and passengers in other vans can follow along on their GeoPads.

Adding digital cameras and voice recognition software will make the GeoPad even more versatile, says Knoop, and the system can easily be adapted for field research and instruction in biology, anthropology and other areas of science and education outside the classroom.

"By providing students with more information and more up-to-date information than we could give them in the field in the past, we're significantly adding to the learning experience rather than just replacing the old-fashioned way of doing it," van der Pluijm says.

Robyn Burnham, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, has a similar motivation for developing an electronic plant identification guide. On a recent field trip to the Nan Weston Nature Preserve at Sharon Hollow, about 25 miles southwest of Ann Arbor, it's clear how students in her plant diversity course could benefit.

Piling out of vans that transported them from campus, every student carries an enormous bag slung over a shoulder or draped messenger-style across the chest. As they scatter around the wooded glade and crouch to examine leaves and flowers, the students reach into their bags and haul out three, hard-bound volumes, each as thick as a telephone book for a major metropolitan area.

Michigan Flora by U-M emeritus professor of botany Edward G. Voss is the definitive plant identification guide for Michigan, and the tool students need to properly classify plants by genus and species. But the three-volume set weighs eight pounds and is mostly text, with line drawings and maps, but few photographs.

Burnham would like to convert the guide into a field-friendly electronic version, complete with color photos and more detailed plant descriptions, that could be loaded onto a handheld computer. The project is still in very early stages, but Burnham's students would love to see it hurried along.

"My back hurts, and all these books are a hassle, especially since we have to take them in and out all the time," says student Demita Brown as she steps off the path to study a plant. "Sometimes I just want to drop all my stuff off in the van."

Liberating students from their heavy loads might help shift their attention from their aching backs to their surroundings, and that, Burnham says, is one of her main objectives.

"When I'm out here, I'm teaching plant diversity," she says, "but I'm also teaching students to be better observers of the world around them."