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THE CASCADIAN PASSPORT PROJECT
Teachers are busy people. Imagine it was easier for them to find free classroom exercises. Imagine also that those materials were also designed to satisfy official learning standards, and that they were created by local teachers and experts, and focused on local issues and processes. Imagine also that teachers and students (of every age) could track learning achievement in personalized “passports,” rich with local environmental, social and civic knowledge. This is the dream of the Cascadian Passport project – a system to emphasize local knowledge and learning opportunities, encouraging ecological and social awareness of the Cascadian bioregion.
For learners, the passports would record their steps towards a deepening understanding of place. For educators, the passport system would provide easily accessible learning materials, based on local topics likely to resonate with students. It would also help local experts (e.g., community institutions, elders, scientists) to share their knowledge with their communities and promote civic involvement. Over time, we believe this would lead to an expanded awareness of local ecological and social processes, along with greater community engagement.
Most users would initially experience the passport project as a website where customized passport-like documents could be created, downloaded, and printed. Teachers could also use the website to create customized “passports” for students, as well as to identify learning materials and opportunities relevant to a range of subjects (e.g., mathematics, history) and topics (e.g., resource management, native history). They would be able to provide feedback on their experiences with those materials, or participate in the generation of new materials. They could also work with local experts using collaborative wiki-like tools, developing new learning materials and improving existing projects.
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