Using Twitter to investigate environmental change in coral reefs.

Image on left: Lizard Island, 2012.

​Image above: Fitzroy Island, 2016.

Social media is a tool that students are very familiar with and use for a variety of personal and social purposes. If we can tap into students' enthusiasm for and ability to use social media we can easily harness it to enhance student learning. Recent coral bleaching events have been discussed widely on twitter by experts and organisations that study and work to protect coral reefs. 

Some examples of experts and organisations to follow on twitter:

• @ProfTerryHughes – Director of ARC Centre of excellence
• @CoralCoE – The ARC Centre of Execllence for Coral Reef Studies
• @jpGattuso – CNRS Research Professor
• @AllisonPaley & @GraceEFrank – Research Assistant with Coral Ecophysiology Lab
• @jcu – James Cook University
• @AustCoralReefs – Australian Coral Reef Society

 

Twitter lesson 1
Investigate the differences in people’s views about the causes of environmental issues such as coral bleaching and ocean acidification. Take screenshots of a range of different views about this issue. Refer to the information about environmental worldviews from previous lessons. Make an inference about the environmental worldview that each person holds. Why do you think this? Justify your answers.
What are your thoughts and opinions about this issue? How do your thoughts reflect your own environmental worldview?
 
Twitter lesson 2
Create a Storify that shows the progress of discussions, research, campaigns and decisions related to the management of a coral reef. Use the tweets and the links contained in them as a starting point for a geographical inquiry. This may help you to pose questions, planning an investigation, collecting secondary information.
In doing so, consider:

• Have you represented a range of viewpoints?
• Is there evidence of reliable geographic or scientific research?
• Where can you take your inquiry from here?

Summarise the key points from your storify. This will provide the context for a geographical inquiry.