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Clarion students have an international impact for the environment

The Appropedia Team from left: Dr. Joshua Pearce, Julie Bondon,Philip Mowrer, Dana Martz, Julia Seitz, and Eleanor ter Horst.

Early in May, a group of Clarion University students demonstrated a “Demo Camp Unit” in front of Gemmell Student Complex to raise awareness about their project to enhance Appropedia.org for global sustainable development.

Appropedia is the site for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development. Appropedia allows for massive multiuser collaboration to solve sustainable development problems because it is wiki-based website, where a large number of participants are allowed to create and modify the content directly from their web browsers. The most well-known wiki is Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia, which is both free and editable by anyone.

Philip Mowrer explained, “Appropedia is a great way for people from any culture to come together and create ways to build better lives.”

“Appropedia is an excellent technical resource, but it did have one problem – although it is targeted at a global audience the majority of its over 10,000 pages was written in English,” said Dr. Joshua Pearce, assistant professor of physics at Clarion University Physics.

The Clarion University student project was a collaboration between the physics department, which routinely uses sustainable technologies to teach physics, and the department of modern languages and cultures, chaired by Dr. Eleanor ter Horst, to expand the information to a global reach. Students worked throughout the semester to develop content in German and French on the mostly English-language website, which features projects that are sustainable and environmentally friendly.

One of the German language projects featured on the website is a "demo camp unit" that can be built to promote any cause. Clarion students imported this idea from Germany and built two of these units to raise awareness about their project and about environmental issues more generally as seen on campus.

Dana Martz said,“Working on Appropedia was an experience of a lifetime. The site increased my knowledge of sustainable development greatly and expanded my understanding of the German language. Everyone should get involved in this site.”

“We all feel a responsibility to 'help the environment' and those in the developing world, yet many people find it difficult to find a way that they can contribute,” said Pearce. Appropedia provides a conduit for students to make a concrete positive contribution to a just, sustainable world,”

ter Horst said, “Not only can students make contributions to develop appropriate technologies, they can also ensure that these technologies reach a wider audience by translating articles into other languages. Students themselves benefit from the experience by learning about sustainable development while increasing their language proficiency.

“I really like that students can participate and contribute to such a big project like Appropedia,” said Julia Seitz. “During my exchange year [from Germany] at Clarion I enjoyed the high involvement and dedication at the student level.”

“Working on translating very challenging technical language is an excellent way to improve both American students’ foreign language skills and the English writing skills of international students who attend Clarion through exchange programs,” said ter Horst.

Julie Bondon, an international student from France agrees, “Working on Appropedia was and will continue to be a great experience. I have increased my knowledge about sustainable development but also have improved my English skills and vocabulary.”

Clarion University student work is now featured on the main page of Appropedia with direct links to the Deutsch and Français sections. For more information about the project see: www.appropedia.org or contact Dr. Joshua Pearce jpearce@clarion.edu or Dr. Eleanor ter Horst eterhorst@clarion.edu.

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