My journey to NAAEE conference starts from here 「開端」

I have arranged my first day (Oct 10) at Spokane as joining the EE research symposium in the morning and with HHMI citizen science workshop in the afternoon. Here's what I learnt during this first day morning:

星期二抵達斯波坎後，星期三一整日規劃自己上午參與學術研討會、下午參與公民科學家工作坊。以下是我上午的學習經驗：

I was really excited to join four different types of the presentations which were keynote, round table, eeHack and workshop. Since in Taiwan, we don't really have roundtable in our conference. I was really happy to know how it works.

我很期待參與四種不同型式的研討會會議：專題演講（通常是重量級貴賓）、圓桌會議（台灣的研討會沒有這種會議形式）（根據維基百科：圓桌會議指圍繞圓桌舉行的會議，圓桌會議並無主席位置，亦無隨從位置，旨在人人平等）、eeHACK（姑且譯為ee破解，主要在討論與思考解決問題的策略），以及工作坊（強調實務工具運用，通常為整日或半日的課程）。

1. Keynote Panel: Stories from Research
1. 專題演講：來自研究的故事

Four inspiring panel speakers

These researchers shared their stories with facing difficulties during their research works. The one that inspired me the most is a story about how the speaker started her student research project as studying the value of NTFP (non-timber forest product) with community engagement. They called this project as Participatory Action Research. However, the tribe didn't really want to get involved in this project. They only participate with interviews. Thus, the speaker said that we can't always assume the locals have the willingness to join the research. We need to consider their feeling, too. And re-think how to work to best find the balance between locals and researchers.

A wrap-up reflection is to think what is the challenge in our life and how we overcome it. And always being humble to show that scientists are not always powerful or known-everything. Be humble to face any difficulties and collaborate with others to find solutions. At last, what would be the story that one day we would share to our grandkids? 

這場演講的故事主要在分享學者們在研究過程中遇到的難題。其中一個令我印象深刻的故事是一位學者分享她學生時期參與的森林資源價值的研究計畫，是個「參與式行動研究」的形式，需和當地居民合作進行森林資源調查，並透過訪談瞭解森林資源對居民的社會與經濟價值。正好跟我的碩士專題研究題目相似，所以特別有印象。

學者說，由於初期居民並不願意參與研究計畫，僅願意扮演諮詢角色，因此計畫推展並不順利。她深刻感受到科學家不能總是假設居民需要科學家的幫助，也不能假設居民總會有意願參與研究計畫。要如何讓地方居民「真正」願意參與計畫，需要更多的溝通與協調，瞭解所需與立場，找到彼此間的平衡。

最後的反思是，我們如何面對生活或研究中遇到的難題？科學家並非萬能，解決問題仍須謙虛地透過與不同人群的合作。最後，請大家思考，如果將來要跟自己的孫子分享自己的故事，那會是一個怎麼樣的故事，才是值得傳承下去的呢？

留給大家一個開放的問題慢慢思考醞釀。

2. Round table, topic as "The Interdisciplinarity of EE Research: What Fields are Included?"

2. 圓桌會議 (參與的主題是：跨領域的環境教育研究－包含哪些領域？)

We were doing brainstorming to generate big pictures of Interdisciplinarity of EE research

This is a super complicated mind map.

Round table provides chance for people in the group to speak out different statement and opinions and the moderator integrate all the thoughts into mind map.

圓桌會議的操作形式類似公民咖啡館的概念，邀請一群人針對主題提出各種意見，透過桌長彙整所有的資訊，變成完整的心智圖。

I am totally amazed by those people's background which included environmental communication, social media, social psychology, business marketing, decision science, gender studies, etc. These fields mainly include social, economic, psychology and ecology. And all of us were interested in how to enhance learning, communication, social justice and changing behavior.

我被我們這桌來自各種不同領域的人給震懾住了。他們的領域是如此多元！涵蓋社會、經濟與生態三大面向，關注溝通、學習、行為改變與社會正義等議題。

There is on Phd student from New Zealand with research topic focusing on food education through visual media like clips, films, posters, etc, which is so interesting.

And there is another Phd student has similar background as me (ecology) and trying to focusing on environmental communication and decision making. We had further discussion about her thinking of how to managing different fields and building up bridge between them.

我對其中兩位博士生的背景與研究主題非常有興趣，其中一位是希望瞭解運用不同社群媒體傳播食農教育概念，如何產生正面影響;另外一位是生態背景，進行環境溝通方面的研究，希望能探討透過環境教育如何影響環境決策，以及如何進行不同領域的溝通與建立橋樑。

3. Skill Builder - eeHack: Designing and Participating in Collective Experiments to Address EE challenges

3. 透過設計思考處理環教難題

Explaining the process of design thinking

   

The five steps of today's practice is "Empathize, define, Ideate, Prototype, Test".

Each group had a difficult challenge to deal with and by creatively brainstorming to come up with unexpected result (which might be a good solution).

這場是在教如何運用設計思考處理環境所面臨的困難挑戰。透過五個步驟，進行腦力激盪、發揮想像力與創意，逐步產生解決方案。

I like the step as "Ideate", we need to come up with positive solution and begins with "Yes". For example, Yes, we can set up a EE party to get more people involve and recognize this organization. We don't need to think about the realistic situation which can brings out more possibilities which we might never think of.

我喜歡其中一個思考階段叫做“理想化”， 主持人請我們輪流提出正面的解決方案，並以「是的」，作為發表意見的起頭。例如：是的，我們可以透過辦一場環教派對讓更多人參與並更加瞭解這個組織。這個階段的思考不需要煩惱可行性或真實狀況，如此一來，或許可以激盪出從來沒有想到過的好點子！

I did so much brainstorming in the morning which was really exhausting but a lot of fun. I'll put my afternoon experience into another post.

早上進行太多腦力激盪，腦力完全耗盡，但是超好玩的！

下午的心得就放到下一篇文章裡囉～