Connectedness with Nature and INaturalist

Educators
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Good morning from Ioannina, Greece!!

I have created two projects labeled “Ioannina Castle” and " Παιδαγωγικό Τμήμα Νηπιαγωγών" respectively in my hometown. 1st and 4th year early childhood university students participated. Prior to the first project I gave them a questionnaire that has questions like “Do you believe that INaturalist can connect you with nature?”, “Would you consider using INaturalist/Seek in the kindergarten?”, etc. In addition, they had to fill in the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) (Frantz&Mayer, 2004). Now it’s about time to give them the post questionnaire to see whether INaturalist did anything to the CNS score. Does anyone know if there has been any INaturalist related questionnaire or perhaps? I ve contacted a member of INaturalist in Hong Kong who has created a INaturalist use Questionnaire, I’ve been searching in Scholar and I ve found quite a few papers, dissertations, etc. I am considering to see if the frequency of use of the application, or the number of observations correlates, but still something is missing. When I started using the app I felt that it really helped me reconnect somehow with nature. How can I put it down to a survey? I wonder…I’d be very pleased if anyone knows something about that concept. Any advice would help! Thanks!

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I don’t have an answer to your question, but kudos to you for your effort to engage these future teachers of very young children. What a huge impact they can have by opening young eyes to nature, and what a rich resource you are giving the teachers by introducing them to iNaturalist. Good luck with your work!

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Thanks for showing interest. I sense that there might be an ontological paradox here. Connectedness to nature is a construct to describe our emotional, cognitive, etc. relationship with nature and though it has been investigated thoroughly, it still can’t be literally measured, we are one with nature, and still we have to put it in a cartesian subject object relation. What I mean with oxymoron is that we use technology to connect with nature. And I think it works, it can aid in understanding the surrounding world. A camera, a supercool crowdsourcing social utility, technology, machine learning and lots of many other things. Using technology to learn about the world around us, using iNat as part of our lifestyle, to raise awareness about biodiversity, to connect with others, to educate, to add pressure to policy makers, to offer a tool for monitoring and conservation. Thank you!

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