Robotic Geese

Robotic Geese: Experiential Learning and Exploration demonstrates to teachers and students how to re-imagine interaction with wildlife through participatory design/build activities and field studies with natural spaces and wildlife. The following pages will show one how to build a robotic geese device, meant to bridge the divide between human-animal interaction. The idea of Robotic Geese was developed by techno eco-artist and scientist Dr. Natalie Jeremijenko through her project, Ooz, Inc. a zoo without cages. The document is divided into three parts that correspond to elementary, middle school and high school level activities all aimed at building a robotic goose device and organizing a launch to observe human, wildlife interaction supported by activities tied to exisiting science, language arts and social science standards in K-12 setting.

Each activity and goose launching is meant to foster an empathy and deeper understanding of wildlife, to facilitate imaginative interactions between animals and humans. Robotic Geese: Experiential Learning achieves this by giving students the opportunity to explore these possibilities in a playful and innovative way: by actually giving them the time and place to talk to the very wildlife they have a fascination with! The goal is therefore to structure participation and stimulate wonder by prompting questions of interaction and providing students a means to explore outside with animals in an innovative way. Lastly, the hope is that through these interactions between animals and humans, students and teachers alike will learn something new about wildlife and about themselves in a synchronistic way that re-imagines how we live and who we live amidst; animal and human alike.