Hosted in Montreal next spring, this congress is kind of like the Olympics of the environmental education world: held biennially, it draws together academics and practitioners from around the world. I just submitted an abstract for a paper that is largely based on my dissertation research. Here’s the 250 words-or-less abstract: Bird-watching remains one of […]
Category: Academia
A way to say thanks
I’m writing this in the car in between two interviews that I’m conducting this sunny Sunday morning. What I’ve been struck with as I’ve been busy with interviews this Spring and Fall is just how generous people have been with their time and personal space–I’m visiting people in their homes as a part of my […]
Academics that are also characters
I signed myself up for an Academia.edu account yesterday. It seems like an interesting hybrid of an academic homepage and social networking site. Has the potential for being a useful place to network if more people sign up for it (currently there are 5 people who have signed up from York–seriously under-represented). Regardless, I came […]
Student feedback from the first class: in their own words
From the “Lofty Goals” Dept’: From the “Born Romantic” Dept’: From the “Extreme Handwriting” Dept’: From the “Cut the Fluff” Dept’:
When scheduling confrences gets complicated
Earlier this week, I posted a list of academic goals for the upcoming year. Kind of key, in my mind, was presenting at the upcoming 5th World Environmental Education Congress. Unrelated, I was asked earlier in the year if I would lead the Quest trip to Point Pelee next spring in addition to my regular […]
New Year’s Resolutions
It seems to me that September, and the start of a new academic year, is a more significant mark of the passage of time and the beginning of the new than January 1st. This academic year also holds to be more significant than my previous years: working on research and writing a dissertation are the […]
Prairie Chickens and bird-watching
I keep an eye out for newspaper articles published on birding as I find they provide an interesting insight into the larger cultural perception of the activity. While I’m not doing a discourse analysis of this stuff, a recent article published in the New York Times (Prairie Birds Flirt, and a Town Livens Up) hits […]
Rondeau Research
So I’m well passed the halfway mark for my tenure conducting birder research here at Rondeau Provincial Park. I’ve got sixteen interviews in the hopper and could get a couple more before I leave on Saturday. While the birding hasn’t been stellar (it’s been “thin” as someone today described it), I’m really pleased with the […]
(I’m about to be) Deep in the heart of Texas
Without making this post into a reminiscence about my youth and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, I am off to Austin, Texas tomorrow with my supervisor (Dr. Leesa Fawcett) to assist with a research project on animal minds. We’re going to be interviewing Dr. Merlin Tuttle, founder of Bat Conservation International (a non-profit whose mission you […]
(Amateur) birders & (professional) robots: the “truth” & access to knowledge
I’m supposed to be turning an abstract I wrote into a paper and I’m having some troubles beginning. So rather than staring at the computer screen all day wondering how to begin, I’m going to try banging out my ideas here and see if that gives me a kernel to begin my “real” paper. I’m […]