Educational Media Reviews Online

The program is intended to provide a course of study in language arts based on the premise that students with a cultural background valuing hunting and fishing and passionate about those activities can be engaged in dealing with written language about the very outdoor activities in which they are interested. The guide provides learning opportunities and activities in biology, nature and the environment in addition to language arts projects based on fishing in Vermont. The multi-media resource list included in the text is comprehensive for the target audience and should be easily adapted to maintain the interest of a particular mix of students. The material is accurate and objective and presented in a straightforward lesson-by-lesson approach. The strength of this package is in the cultivation of additional interests in the familiar and the accepted (Vermont fishing) which should deepen students’ understanding of sport fishing and the environment. The goal is in improving communication and promoting interest in writing and other language activities. The weaknesses are based in the necessary use of the local Vermont environment. The local approach does not lend itself well to the program being easily adaptable to using the curriculum in association with environments other than coldwater fisheries, though the guide could be a resource for developing similar materials for other natural and cultural environments. Though the accompanying audio tracks are incidental to the guide, they provide an amount of valuable context. Used independently, the audio CD could serve as a model for excerpting and arranging locally produced audio histories.

The technical quality of the audio CD and teacher’s guide is excellent. The authors have indicated the use of the audio clips in the guide and have provided a separate printed index to the CD tracks for easy access. The photographs fit the guide’s context and are captioned separately as to location and subject.

The guide is enhanced by the audio CD accompanying it, though it would be inaccurate to describe this resource as a kit. This is an excellent addition to curriculum collections in the schools and universities in Vermont, Upstate New York, the New England States and Canada. It can be adapted to programming in the other coldwater states of the US, and with some effort, extended to warm water fisheries, perhaps to salt water environments. Other educational uses of the program would be to serve as an example of what kind of curriculum guide or program could be produced with clear educational objectives, some imagination, and limited expertise with digital audio and digital images. That is, the product is arranged so well that education students could design and mount similar projects (lessons, resources, audio and video files) on their own web pages or for their own teaching portfolio following the example of this fine package from the Vermont Folklife Center.