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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • The Campus Beat: Using Blogs, Facebook, to Teach Environmental Security at West Point

    November 17, 2009 By Geoffrey D. Dabelko
    The lecture was only a few hours away. In desperation, I turned to Facebook. “I’ve got just 50 minutes with the cadets at West Point today to talk water, conflict, and cooperation. What are the most compelling examples you would use to make both hard security and human security points, both threat and opportunity points? I ask in part because it is proving harder to decide what to leave out than what to put in!”

    Within seconds, experts from the Departments of State and Energy, USAID, and National Geographic responded with examples, including the Tibetan plateau and glacial melt, the lower Jordan River, and more. I used these cases and others to break through to an audience that included both those skeptical of “treehugger” issues and those eager to learn. The map of Chinese current and planned hydro projects produced audible gasps and wide eyes among the class of future officers.

    While at West Point, colleague Meaghan Parker and I met with geography faculty to better understand how and what they are teaching on environmental security and demographic security. The professors on the banks of the Hudson face similar challenges to their non-military brethren; today’s students have shorter attention spans and lack experience conducting in-depth research (or getting beyond Google).

    But some challenges are unique to the service academies: isolation from academic peers; the need to make sure the material is relevant to future military leaders; and most of all, the physical and mental demands on cadets’ time placed by army training. I saw it as a sign of success that I only had three stand up during my lecture, the military’s sanctioned way to keep yourself awake in class. (LTC Lou Rios USAF, one of the faculty members we met with, wrote about teaching environmental security at West Point previously on New Security Beat.)

    Video, blogs, and other new media seem like a way to bridge some of these gaps. We’re especially excited that the cadets in at least three courses will be using the New Security Beat as part of their classes by reading posts, commenting, and proposing a post on a topic of their choosing. We’re looking forward to a cadet joining us next summer for internship with ECSP.

    All of these outreach efforts are part of our strategy to both understand how all types of actors—including future army officers—come to understand environment and security links while providing insights and analysis to that same diverse group.

    Photos by Geoff Dabelko and Meaghan Parker
    Topics: Campus Beat, China, demography, environmental security, media, military, security, water
    • Tom Deligiannis

      Blog fatigue – I'm adding it to email fatigue, journal fatigue, news feed fatigue, social network fatigue, fatigue fatigue, …

      It's incredibly hard to keep up with what's being done in the environmental security field, let alone actually read the stuff I come across. Choosing the best and most useful among all this stuff to show to students is becoming ever more challenging.

      Geoff's post nicely demonstrates how we can use technology to help in our collective teaching efforts. Are there other ways to use technology – perhaps to find a way to recommend to each other material that seems particularly good for different kinds of teaching tasks? Perhaps an idea worth exploring in the ECSP.

      TD

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/07430391562374233505 Meaghan Parker

      Tom, I hear you–the tidal wave of interest in environmental security is exhausting, yet welcome. ECSP has talked about building a shared syllabi–like a wiki perhaps?–but we don't have a good platform on our current website. Maybe others can chime in on what would be the best platform. Would it be Blackboard? Or would it be something more like Google Reader? Or even better, if someone is already building it, please let us know–no need to reinvent the wheel!

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/03842970040009620763 Sean Peoples

      Technology fatigue is all too common these days given the breadth of information at our fingertips. Perhaps we need to replicate websites and platforms that aggregate recommendations from users – I'm thinking DIGG or Slashdot. The most popular stories and information about the field would be curated by those interested in the topics. I believe if we have a vested community of users generating the popularity of stories, it would help in recommending highlights for many of us who are on a steady diet of information overload. But, it may also leave out some really great, under reported aspects.

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