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Outdoor Learning with Apps in Danish Open Education

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Handbook for Online Learning Contexts: Digital, Mobile and Open

Abstract

Worldwide, the use of digital technologies for learning, seeking information, social contact and entertainment is on the rise. In Denmark, 70% of children aged seven to twelve are active YouTube consumers (Mehlsen 2016). They also communicate heavily by exchanging text, pictures and links through social media, such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.

However, this extensive use of technology coincides with a decline in outdoor experiences (Fraser et al. 2010), which has been popularised as ‘nature deficit disorder’, where technology-based communication and indoor activities replace learning and playing outside (Louv 2008). Informal learning about how the world is connected from direct experience of nature is replaced with another type of informal learning that focuses mainly on communicative skills and digital literacy. However, the divide between nature and technology is not set in stone. Technology and the use of social media could recruit children into more informal learning experiences of the natural world (e.g. Schilhab et al. 2018b; Schilhab, 2021).

Based on the research project ‘Natural Technology’, we document and analyse the kind of app technologies children and young people implement in their outdoor activities. Our aim is to systematise the current kinds of technologies children and young people use in what could be considered open education situations. We then consider the question of the extent to which informal learning using digital technology contributes to direct experiences with an improved understanding of nature.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/kids-climate-march-strikes-around-the-world-fridaysforfuture/ & https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2019/mar/15/climate-strikes-2019-live-latest-climate-change-global-warming & https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/

  2. 2.

    Digital ethnography is a broad field interested in how “the digital has become part of the material, sensory and social worlds we inhabit” (Pink et al. 2016, p. 7).

  3. 3.

    We have left apps out of our inventory that are more tangential to the nature and technology theme.

  4. 4.

    Although apps in this category are rare and therefore collapsed with C-apps on the website, for analytic purposes we describe them here as an autonomous category.

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Funding

This research was supported by a grant from Nordea-fonden to TS and the research project Natural Technology (02–2017-1293).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

    Theresa Schilhab

  2. Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Gertrud Lynge Esbensen

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  1. Theresa Schilhab
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Correspondence to Theresa Schilhab .

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  1. School of Culture and Communication, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Ann Marcus-Quinn

  2. Department of Education and Skills, Department of Education, Ireland, Dublin, Ireland

    Tríona Hourigan

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Schilhab, T., Esbensen, G.L. (2021). Outdoor Learning with Apps in Danish Open Education. In: Marcus-Quinn, A., Hourigan, T. (eds) Handbook for Online Learning Contexts: Digital, Mobile and Open. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67349-9_8

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