環境

This fiscal year, our club supported active learning activities and hosted a screening of images of the Tama River’s nature (see website below for details). They were for citizens and businesses, targeting mainly the students and teachers of the primary schools, middle schools, and special-needs schools in Hino City (a total of approximately 4800 people). The nature in the midstream of the Tama River was used as materials for the classes and formed the basis of lectures of life environmental studies and integrated studies (e.g. observation of aquatic organisms). We created a website (http://hino-donguri.com/index.html) and offered a support menu on the Internet of about 20 types of environmental studies and showed our activities and their accomplishments. We have also developed a digital pictorial book of living organisms, “Living Organisms of Hino,” as web teaching material to be used before or after the active learning activities. It contains images of about 100 species of living organisms, shown by season together with the scenery of the countryside and river (each 15-minute long), and a collection of clips with narration explaining the ecology of each living organism (about 60 species), all tied together with a search function. We used these materials before or after the abovementioned activities.

The activities of our organization have gained in popularity every year; and in the last few years, we had offered activities to nearly five thousand children and their families every year. In addition, since many of our activities were in the form of study classes and open classes at primary schools, we were able to make considerable contributions to the environmental education of Hino City. We hope these activities will cultivate, especially in children who will carry on the work in the future, a love for the living organisms in the river and its surroundings and a mindset to seek better relationships between humans and nature. Furthermore, the creation of the website will enable us to provide information, which had been a challenge until now, to people who seek support (mainly primary school teachers) and to prepare an environment for children to learn prior to participating in these nature experience activities. The website is expected to enhance the efficiency of such activities. From the perspective of providing materials to those who ponder on how to treat nature and how to integrate nature into education, the publication of these high-quality images, support menu, and images of the organization’s activities will help a wide audience and have a tremendous impact as an enlightenment activity.

Fumi Nakanishi (Lecturer, Tokyo Gakugei University)

Tadaki Sugiura (Hino City Environmental Information Center)

Other members of the Hino-donguri Club