Digital photo journaling: a USFWS ee curriculum

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Education in Environmental Education in the College of Education and Human Service Professions, University of Minnesota Duluth, 2012. Committee names: Julie Ernst (Chair), Terrie Shannon, Kevin Zak. This item has been modified from the original to redact the signatures present.In Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv (2005) described a shift in our relationship to the natural world. On average, today’s youth spend 6.5 hours a day with electronic media (Driessnack, 2009; Roberts & Foehr, 2008). While this technology has expanded access to the virtual world, it has also attributed to an ever-widening divide between today’s youth and the natural world (Louv, 2005). The Department of the Interior (DOI) initiative Youth in the Great Outdoors and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) priority Let’s Go Outside: Ensuring the Future of Conservation emphasize a need to foster environmental connectedness in America's youth (Department of the Interior, 2010; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 2010a). The purpose of this study was to explore the use of digital photo journaling as an environmental education method for fostering connectedness to nature among upper elementary youth. A digital photo journaling curriculum was developed, piloted, and evaluated in the Prairie Science Class (PSC) at Prairie Wetlands Learning Center (PWLC) in Fergus Falls, MN.University of Minnesota Duluth. College of Education and Human Service Profession