Digital Balance: Why Nature Matters More Than Ever

Digital Balance: Why Nature Matters More Than Ever

Kerry Crofton, PhD, is a public health educator, corporate wellness consultant, yoga and Chi Gong instructor, and mindfulness teacher.  She is the author of Less Screen More Green - Finding Freedom with The Mindful Tech Plans™ – foreword by Dr. Jane Goodall – and the founder and CEO of the Canadian nonprofit Global Health Alliance and the consulting company WellBeing International Ltd.  Kerry is honoured to be a "Fellow Traveler" with Harvard's Digital Wellness Lab.

Breaking Barriers: Race and Outdoor Learning

Jacqueline L. Scott is a scholar, writer, and consultant on race and nature. She is a postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University. Scott’s PhD thesis is called Being Black and Outdoors: The Perception of the Wilderness in the Canadian Imagination. She is a former fellow at the Safina Center, and a past community director at the Institute for Public Art and Sustainability, Evergreen Brickworks. Scott volunteers as a land steward, and as a hike and bike leader with outdoor clubs.

Land-based Learning: What It Is And Isn't

To open the National Outdoor Learning Conference in May 2025, we had a thought-provoking panel discussion on land-based learning from three Indigenous educators. The panelists (who introduce themselves right at the start), are deeply engaged in this work and explore the full spectrum of land-based learning, highlighting its key components and significance.

Educator Wellbeing: Connecting Teacher Wellness with Outdoor Learning

Dr. Kendrick is currently the Director of Field Experience at the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. She was a K-12 classroom teacher for nineteen years specializing in Physical Education, English and Language Arts. One of Dr. Kendrick’s main research areas focuses on compassion fatigue, burnout, and emotional labour in Alberta educational workers.  Dr. Kendrick is the co-producer of the Ed Students in Conversation podcast series on voicEd Radio Canada and developer of the HEARTcare Educators website. She was the recipient of the 2020 Online Teaching Award from the Werklund School of Education as well as an Emerging Scholar Award from The Learner research network in 2019.

Technology, Climate Change, and Eco-Spirituality

Colin Harris speaks with Dr. Jenellen Good about issues like climate change, technology, and eco-spirituality. They discuss how these issues are communicated, both societally and educationally, and the role these issues play within the education system. Dr. Good is currently the Department Chair of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University in Ontario. She is also a professor at Brock University researching the role of communication in how people relate to the “natural environment.” More specifically, she explores intersections of screens and the climate crisis, materialism, eco-spirituality and media/digital literacy. She teaches classes about environmental communication, psychology of screens, audiences, environmental justice, and communication research methods. She has published widely on these topics including her book Television and the Earth: Not a Love Story as well as many journal articles and newspaper op-eds. She is currently working on her new book entitled Stories, Stuff & Spirituality. Show notes: - Dr. Good vaguely mentions one happiness alternative economic index and also mentions Bhutan’s alternative economic index. Bhutan’s index is actually a “Gross National Happiness Index” and other similar indices that she talks about are the Genuine Progress Indicator (GP), Human Development Index (HDI), Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and the Happy Planet Index (HPI). - Ronald Wright’s Massey Lecture book A Short History of Progress was published in 2004. - COP 2024 was in Baku (there was a COP in Doha – in 2012)