My final impressions of Colloquium are that I am glad I took this course because I feel I have gained much knowledge about Florida's environment and natural world. I have learned about sustainability and conservation for improving my surroundings not only for our society, but also for future generations to come. Before taking this class, I had no idea what carbon footprint or ecological litreracy meant. I now understand how to calculate my own footprint and have become more ecologically literate after taking this course.
The only change I would make to this course was the online group work, specifically the Wiki project. I thought it was difficult to organize a project virtually as a group and work on the same website at different times with different discussion post locations. I would keep the same reading assignments but probably decrease the requirements of the discussion posts because 4 posts and then an additional 4-6 replies is a lot of discussion for only a few short readings.
I really enjoyed using this blogspot for my journal entries because it was not only convenient, but easy to use and navigate through. I'd rather use this site than hand-write a journal and attempting to draw nature pictures like some other Colloquium classes are required to do. I liked David Orr's readings because I was able to relate to what he was saying about the environment, sustainability, ecological literacy, etc. However, I disliked the Louv and Dewey readings because of the level of intelligence they wrote in. I felt it was hard to understand the impressive words they used to describe their feelings about environmental education and the other various topics that I was not so interested in.
Since I am still unfamiliar with the state of Florida, I do not have many suggestions for activities, however, I feel that field trips should be directed to more popular areas of FL not limited to just SW FL. For example, if visiting a national park or zoo was an option, I would prefer to go on a field trip there than an indoor museum.
All in all, I enjoyed taking Colloquium this summer and would have probably enjoyed it even more if I had the advantage of taking it in class. I feel I have learned a great deal of environmental knowledge that I will take with me on my journey. I also realized that I have become more environementally aware and I increasingly stop to question nature's various wonders.
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