In my Nature Knowledge class, we have a had a few lectures on how glaciers are formed. Glaciers are a big part in Norway's landscape and important to the Norwegian culture and history. As we would sit in class, see pictures, and create representations with a block of ice and a tray of sand, it was still hard, for me at least, to transfer what I learned into a real context. Little did I know, we had an excursion planned for us to visit a well known glacier in Norway's Josteldalsbreen National Park and actually be able to walk on it. This really got me thinking how combining classroom setting teaching and outdoor setting teaching can allow me to not only know about glaciers, but understand how they are formed by visiting one. For some it is hard to transfer what we learn in class to a real-life setting. Below is a link to a video by a world renowned education and creativity expert, Sir Ken Robinson, who does an amazing demonstration how education has evolved throughout the years and why combing outdoor setting and classroom setting teaching.
Changing Education Paradigms
When driving up to the parking by Jostedal Glacier, right away you could see the change in vegetation the closer you moved towards the glacier. In class we learned that as the glacier grows, it wipes out all the vegetation in its path. As the glacier recedes, pioneer species, usually smaller plants, are the first to regrow. So from the start of the road, there were small birch trees starting to grow, but as we moved closer, only smaller vegetation were growing. Below is a picture of my class walking towards the glacier, and in the foreground, you can see we are just leaving the nearest vegetation and the area closet to the glacier is barren.
I believe learning in an outdoor environment is crucial to both cement the information taught and to help students with transferring knowledge between multiple contexts. For example in a study on environmental and outdoor learning reported in a book titled Space and Place, by Emilia Fägerstam, it is noted how students bring what the learn from a class to real life scenarios. Fägerstam documents, "An example from physics is using a tree and chair and block to demonstrate the 'theory of leverage'... for biology, using stuffed birds and binoculars to assess knowledge of common species" (Fägerstam, 2012: 12). Relating back to what we learned about glaciers, we were taught about the two kinds of ice on a glacier, blue ice and normal ice. Blue ice is formed when the ice and snow on a glacier is compresses until there is hardly any air bubbles, giving it a smooth texture and blue coloring. Normal ice is formed by the compression of snow but still with many air bubbles trapped inside, giving it the clear look of just frozen water. When walking on the glacier, we could easily pick out the blue and normal ice. Normal ice was easy to walk on due to all the air-pockets while the blue ice's slick surface made it harder to walk on.
The picture on the left nicely shows that the top of the glacier where we walked was mainly normal ice, but in a crevasse, as you go further into the glacier, the ice becomes blue ice due to the immense compression of the ice above it. On the picture to the right shows a big area of the top surface, which is usually normal ice because it has yet to be compressed. Maybe once the snow comes, what we have walked on might become blue ice by the weight of the snow compressing the ice.
Being able to go to a glacier and even walk on it was an amazing experience. I think that because of this experience, I will remember what I have learned about the glacier more concretely because I have something to relate my knowledge to. Similar to the study done by Fägerstam, I can take what I have learned in a classroom setting and can apply it to real life contexts. The combination of both classroom setting and outdoor setting teaching, I believe, can really help students take what they learn into the future with them because not every career is in a classroom setting.
References
Fägerstam, E. (2012). Space and Place: Perspectives on outdoor teaching and learning.
Robinson, S. (2010. October 14). RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms. Retrieved October 01, 2016, from http://www.youtube.com
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