I was reading this article this morning, and it triggered a question I've been meaning to ask other educators out there, particularly those of us who are avid users and proponents of web 2.0 tools in our teaching and learning: I'm curious as to why we, and other educators with similar practices, lean so often towards third-party tools to create online communities, rather than use the tools that our schools and universities provide.

For example, in my institution, Blackboard is ubiquitous, but I consider it (at least the WebCT version, which is what we use) clunky, ugly, and not at all intuitive either for the student or the professor to use — quite simply, it's not any 'fun'; however, the hosting of materials, assignments, and online conversations elsewhere on the 'net (i.e. NOT on the University servers) makes administrators uncomfortable.

So: Of those of you who have chosen to use third-party tools over those provided by your institution, why have you done so and how has your employer responded?

For the curious (which included myself!), this is how the wetland looked late yesterday evening on our return from Nova Scotia, a few hours before hurricane Kyle peaked in New Brunswick:
 

 
...muddy! :)

Stay dry, everyone.

Another day and we're blessed once again with sunny skies.

Although it's hard to tell from the photograph below, a lot of earth was moved today, thanks to the backhoe: the eastern berm has now been filled in and all berms strengthened and leveled; all large stones have been removed from the perimeter; and all compacted soil has been cleared beyond 3 m from the site.

Nice and tidy.
 

 
That's it for today, and this week.

Next week should see the arrival of fresh topsoil for the berms and perimeter, followed by hydroseeding, and then the installation of a permanent fence. After that, we'll install some benches and we're well on our way to a usable outdoor classroom space!

I'm off to Nova Scotia for the next few days with Hana and my folks. The weather forecast is calling for rain, both here and there. Will we have a wetland on Monday...?

Have a great weekend, everyone, wherever you are.

Day 4 and the soil that was moved into the pit at the end of last week has now been raked out to a depth of about 30 cm, all slopes are now covered in soil, and the outer berms and inner ridges have been shaped and tided as best we can.

A good day's work!
 

 
Tomorrow we hope to bulk up the top of the eastern ridge (on the left of the photo), tidy up the soil outside of the pit, and get the ball rolling on a permanent fence around the wetland site.

That's all for today. I'm off to pick up my folks from the airport — they're visiting us from Ireland for a couple of weeks. First task: introduce them to tuques ;)

Mat and I were back at it this afternoon, along with Jeff from New Maryland Contractors, adding shape to the berms and moving some soil back into the pit:
 

Ta da! Looks great, eh? ;)

This next photo should help explain things a little better:
 

 
We've filled in each corner of the original rectangular pit as well as thrown some soil over two of the major bedrock ridges to help create a figure-of-eight shape to the pit. This will help make the resulting wetland look a lot more 'natural' as well as provide deeper soil into which cattails can be transplanted.

The masses of soil lying within the yellow line will be raked out over the coming days to provide a soil depth at the bottom of the wetland of about 20–30cm.

The next photo provides a rough idea of what the pit will look like when filled with water:
 

 
Quite the little lake! :)

That's it for this week; next week — with help from students at the school — we'll rake out the soil on the bottom, tidy up and compress the berms a little more, and maybe even fill the pit with water if the rains don't beat us to it!

Many thanks to all of you who have contacted me so far about this project — I'm humbled that you're following along with developments and thrilled that a number of you are being inspired to try this for yourselves. It's hard work, but very rewarding, and not only personally, of course — this wetland will: help filter run-off from the adjacent road and help control flooding of the playground during heavy rains; provide important habitat for bugs, amphibians, and maybe even a bird or two; act as a rich teaching and learning resource, not only for the science disciplines, but also for language and creative arts; and provide a unique focal and meeting point for the local community, for students and their parents.

More next week!

A full day, today. My colleague, Mat Fitzgerald, and I spent the morning working the soil around the top edges of the pit to create a flat surface, 2 feet wide all around, that we could use as a 'lip' where the pond liner will be secured outside of the pit:
 

 
After lunch, we were back at it, this time to lay the pond liner. It took a couple of hours of tugging and readjusting, some blisters, and quite a few lungfuls of silica (which coated the liner to stop it sticking to itself — nasty stuff), but we are pretty pleased with the result (the bumps are bedrock ridges):
 

 
For now, we've decided against installing a drywell to control the water level until we see how the wetland behaves when it is full, although it remains an option (along with a french drain outside the downslope berm) if necessary.

In consultation with representatives from School District 18, we've also decided to install a fence around the perimeter of the wetland, for safety. We had originally intended to leave it open, but install a wire mesh just below the water surface wide enough to allow frogs to enter and leave, but strong enough to stop a child from falling in. It turned out that the feet of the mesh screen would likely puncture the liner, so it got the thumbs down.

Some basic landscaping begins tomorrow...

It's finally happening!

More than two-and-a-half years after we first put pen to paper to describe the benefits of an outdoor classroom at Devon Middle School, the crown jewel in our plans — a constructed wetland — is now becoming tangible.

Working with the crew from New Maryland Contractors, we broke ground this morning a little after 9 AM:
 

 
Work continued throughout the day, digging a hole 18m x 9m and 1m deep, clearing rock and flattening out the bottom as best we could.

Why so big? Well, a minimum surface area is needed before frogs, salamanders, and such are attracted to the wetland naturally (it's illegal to "seed" a pond of any size yourself with amphibians).
 

 
A hole this big needs a pond liner of a size that few commercial nurseries can provide, but we found just what we needed at Sun Nurseries in Sussex. Tomorrow's job will be to roll this 300-kg rubber behemoth into place; we already had quite an adventure getting it out of the delivery truck... (no pictures of that, unfortunately!)