S4 Episode 8: FREE - Adventure, Travel, and Learning Using Tech! // Jesse Hildebrand of Exploring By the Seat of Your Pants

“At 'Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants,' we consider our programs to be the springboard to further learning. And frankly, the more we can get kids going outside after our programs, and using that as an opportunity to learn in nature, the happier we are!”

-Jesse Hildebrand

Healthy Screen Habits Takeaway

Resources

For More Info:

https://www.exploringbytheseat.com/

Resources Mentioned:

https://www.backyardbio.net/

https://www.inaturalist.org/

Show Transcript

Hillary Wilkinson: (00:00)

Welcome to Season 4, Episode 8 of the Healthy Screen Habits Podcast! Uh, this season we have a theme of bridging that is to, that is bridging online interest to offline experiences. And my guest today is all about spark in that burning yearning for learning as VP of Education at an organization called Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants. Now just a quick warning. He is in Southern Ontario. I am located in Southern California. That's Southern Ontario, Canada, not Southern Ontario, uh, California. So there is a little bit of a lag. I hope you're gonna hang on and enjoy the ride. Our sound is a little bit different than what you might be used to, but I, like I said, I hope you'll hang on and enjoy the ride. He's got great stuff to share. So Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants brings science and exploration into classrooms through live, free interactive podcasts with experts from around the globe. In using this site, I have been able to see what the weather and ice was like in Antarctica during the scientific expedition to search for the wreck of Shackleton's Endurance. It was amazing to see live footage of the frozen ocean. See what kinds of obstacles these scientists had to overcome. I know we're gonna learn lots more about it and more with that. Welcome to the Healthy Screen Habits Podcast, Jesse Hildebrand!

Jesse Hildebrand: (01:45)

Thank you so so much for having me Hillary. I'm so excited to be here and what a fantastic topic with bridging to kick off this season with, I, I, I can't wait to listen to the other podcast speakers you've had on, and I hope is, uh, my Southern Ontario audio difficulties don't scare off your audience too much. So I think we have some fun stuff to share today.

Hillary Wilkinson: (02:02)

Exactly. If anything, it kind of lends itself to that air of adventure that we're on. It's an audio adventure. Okay. So Jesse, you do really interesting things in the digital space; exploration, communication, and kind of travel through the use of tech is what, and it's one of the ways that I think tech is best used. Can you tell us the idea behind Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants and sort of how it got started?

Jesse Hildebrand: (02:30)

Yeah, absolutely. So it's a two-man organization, uh, founded in Ontario here in the great wilds of, of epic audio adventures. Uh, a teacher who was a classroom teacher, uh, my colleague Joe Robowski founded it back in 2015 and what he was doing at the time was doing what a lot of us have been familiar with over the time of COVID. And that is brewing cool experiences through these video broadcasts. And so he'd have a, a diver or an astronaut come in and talk to his class. And that went really, really well. The idea that instead of a math lesson, you'd have this chance to interact and engage with someone who's at the top of their profession, doing cutting edge science and exploration, uh, sharing these amazing stories was, as you might expect, very captivating to his students. And so my personal background was in large scale science and nature events.

Jesse Hildebrand: (03:16)

You know, Steve Irwin Crocodile Hunter was my hero as a boy, any opportunity to hear from these passionate, charismatic people out in the wild of the globe was always my thing. I, I wanted to do this since I was very young. And so Joe reached out to me given the work that I was doing. And, and frankly, this idea was so great as he was starting to bring it to more classrooms, that my jaw hit the floor. And I mean, it, we were, we were before zoom was really big. We were before classes were doing this on mass and together we've been able to build something really, I think, quite spectacular. I pinch myself daily for having the chance to be involved with 50 broadcasts a month with these incredible people from around the world. We broadcast from 95 countries. Now we've reached well over half a million kids. And, uh, honestly, that's, uh, the most fulfilling thing I, I can imagine. So it's been such a wild ride and so, so much fun, but that's how it got started from an origin in a classroom, just seeking to broaden that to, to more people, having the chance to have that experience.

Hillary Wilkinson: (04:14)

So cool. And I'm sure that, especially during the pandemic, your platform was used by so many who were just looking to kind of enrich the educational experience, but also I love how you're taking, um, like exploration and global thoughts and using them within the classroom so that teachers can kind of bring that real life application of whatever it is they're teaching.

Jesse Hildebrand: (04:43)

Yeah. And so that's the essence of it, first of all, during COVID yes, our, our subscriber count went up by 10 times over the first year of COVID, which was shocking for us and very nice to have the work that we've done for many years recognized in that way by so many educators. But yeah, our, our programs fit nicely within a classroom period. And so instead of doing your basic lesson, you hear from this amazing submarine explorer, and then the classes share with us what they do from there. And, you know, they build a, an ocean unit around it, or they learn about all the creatures in the deep sea, or maybe we have an astronaut on who's also an artist. And so the kids take their turns drawing what they would envision if they had been in space. And so getting that sort of, uh, amazing feedback and, uh, you know, excitement from teachers and students alike is really quite incredibly fulfilling, frankly, to see that people really take up the mantle of, of sort of this springboard. We, we give them the, the initial spark of inspiration and where they take it as the greatest joy of this job.

Hillary Wilkinson: (05:40)

Can you tell us what makes Exploring By The Seat Of Your Pants different from just say like an educational video that we can, I mean, we could check those out from the library or we could, you know?

Jesse Hildebrand: (05:54)

Absolutely. And by the way, educational videos are spectacular, my whole background's in educational videos and I watch many of them all the time. And, and it's so amazing to have at your fingertips, the amount of resources that we have now, but I guess the biggest differences are we really do focus on exploration and adventure, which is nice. So to contrast us with some of the other, other amazing science communication groups out there that do have these connections with scientists, is that we love the opportunity to go live from the field. So we've had, I think the most incredible program we ever did was a live rhino darting from a helicopter. So the guy is in the helicopter with his phone live on camera, darts the rhino, they land beside the rhino and the ground team comes up and they sawed off its horn. And that was to prevent poachers from wanting to take it from the wild.

Jesse Hildebrand: (06:38)

But we captured that all on camera live for students, which was unbelievable. So we emphasize we, we, uh, live for those sort of experiences and it's the interactive element. So you can watch a video online and hear from these amazing experts, but it's the chance to ask them questions and have that feedback and have that conversation makes, I think what we do so special is that these are the sort of people that fill halls. People pay a hundred dollars to hear these people speak in, in halls of thousands of people. I've paid that before I was involved with this organization to hear from these, these amazing speakers. And we bring them live for free, in a conversational way with classrooms around the world. And I think that really does have a lot of value. Um, and so that's, that's our biggest, our biggest distinction, I suppose.

Hillary Wilkinson: (07:23)

Can anyone access Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants? Or is it primarily like an educators only? Is it a subscription? Is it like, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jesse Hildebrand: (07:34)

Yeah, it's absolutely everybody. So we have classes register and people can go to the Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants, website and classes can sign up for those coveted camera spots where we'll have, you know, Mrs. Smith's class in New York or in San Diego, and they'll come on camera and be able to ask the question of the speaker. But every program we do goes live to YouTube where anyone can watch it live. Anyone can share questions in the chat bar and they all live on YouTube forever. So we have a past, uh, library of 2,500 broadcasts on our YouTube channel with any topic you can imagine featured over the last seven years. Now, you can see me hosting a program at 22 years old, looking like a little boy with terrible connectivity on an original Google hangout from back in 2015. But that's an amazing resource! If you wanna learn about the Victoria Bug Zoo, or if you wanna learn about a speaker that maybe we haven't had on in a few years, you can go back to that library and find that, and that's the central essence of what we do is that it's free and always accessible so that no matter if you are in a major city, or if you're in rural Iowa or the Yukon, you have the opportunity to hear from these people and, and learn from them.

Hillary Wilkinson: (08:43)

So cool. So you've been doing this for a long time, seven years, you just said, yeah. Do you, I'm gonna ask you a really hard, I always get asked this question and I,  I'm like, oh, but do you have a favorite broadcast? Do you have a favorite episode?

Jesse Hildebrand: (09:02)

I have a few favorite speakers that we bring on. We're very lucky to be able to partner with some pretty incredible groups, National Geographic Parks, Canada, the Toronto Zoo, where you have these live animals in the broadcast. And it's unbelievable to see there are three people I'm gonna narrow it down to three. I can't go one for you. I'm sorry. We have George Kourounis. One of the world's top explorers, a guy who has explored the doorway to Hell in Turkmenistan, and was standing in a parking garage when Katrina hit and had his wedding in a volcano. And we've had him on 20 times. And he's unbelievable. We have Jill Heinerth the world's top cave diver who literally dove inside an iceberg in Antarctica, like in the iceberg, there was an ice cave filled with frozen water and she dove in that. So she's been on many times, she's a fantastic, and Dr. Diva Amon who some of the audience today might have seen on Welcome to Earth, the national geographic special with Will Smith. Recently, she is one of the world's top deep sea explorer. So when they go down thousands of feet in submersibles, she's the one in that submersible. And she's one of the most eloquent and amazing women people we've ever had on the broadcast. And so those are my three that I consistently think of as you know, the absolute all stars of everything we've done.

Hillary Wilkinson: (10:14)

I love the number of women in science that are featured.

Jesse Hildebrand: (10:19)

We have about 60 to 65%. I'd say of all the speakers we have on our women. Uh, and we spend the entire month of February kicking out all the men and spending the entire month entirely dedicated to women. So that February 12th is the international day for women in science. And so we do about 60 broadcasts every month with incredible women. We have a special festival over a weekend with a 20 broadcast, just in one weekend just to feature women. Because truly when we do broadcast with female speakers, girls in classes ask way more questions. When we do programs with black or indigenous speakers, you have kids in the classes that would otherwise not feel empowered to come up and ask a question. And they do because they see someone who looks like them doing the program. So we always try to emphasize that exploration and science are for absolutely everybody.

Hillary Wilkinson: (11:05)

Fantastic love the representation. So we have to take a break. When we come back, we will learn more about learning through online experiences with experts. 

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Hillary Wilkinson:

My guest is Jesse Hildebrand, the founder of Science Literacy week. A national science festival held across Canada every September and VP of education at Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants. So Jesse, in reading your bio, it's quite clear. And in talking to you, it's quite clear that you are a fan of both exploration and education for anyone who might need convincing. Why is travel important?

Jesse Hildebrand: (12:32)

I love this question. This is my favorite question. I get and pretty much anytime I have the chance to talk on a podcast or interview, and  travel is important because it opens you up to new experiences and ideas and ways of seeing the world that you would otherwise not have the opportunity to. And so through the broadcast that I do through the work that I've done or my entire career, I try to bridge that gap as much as possible and give those experiences as much as can be done virtually to classrooms and to the public around Canada and around the world. But nothing beats actually being there, you don't get the smells, you don't get the, the taste, you don't get those other things that make an experience live as, as incredible as it can be. And I can tell you that having been lucky enough to travel extensively over my life, whenever I do have the opportunity to travel, I, I take it. My understanding of other people has improved so much my willingness to try new things, new foods, uh, has increased, you know, exponentially. And so my life is so much richer from the travel experiences I've had and working with so many explorers. I can tell you that that is a universal feeling. Uh, if you don't come out of travel with more empathy and understanding for other people around the globe, you're not doing it right. And so that's my, my favorite part of, of getting out on adventures personally.

Hillary Wilkinson: (13:50)

It's fascinating you, so your, your best parts of travel are the connection you build with both the landscape and with other people.

Jesse Hildebrand: (13:58)

Absolutely.

Hillary Wilkinson: (13:59)

Neat. So I have to ask you have a dream destination or a must return of your own?

Jesse Hildebrand: (14:06)

Dream destination,

Hillary Wilkinson: (14:07)

Or you can have both. You can have both!

Jesse Hildebrand: (14:09)

Thank you. Thank you. Um, dream destination is I, I really do have a desire to see much of the world. I would love to go to Antarctica. It's a place that so few people relatively speaking get the opportunity to go. It's such a special part of this planet. It looks like a different world entirely. Um, and it seems to really change everyone for the better who has the opportunity to go there.  In terms of return I, I honestly, there's no place. I wouldn't go back to that. I've been, Jordan was one of my very favorite trips I've ever been. There's so many preconceptions about the Middle East from people, even when I went the first time, the, the feedback I got from friends and family, but the fact that I was going was radically different than it was when I'd gone anywhere else. And I can tell you, I've never been in a more welcoming, friendly, and wonderful country in my entire life period.

Hillary Wilkinson: (14:54)

Wow. Which just speaks to the validity of what you had just said in the previous question

Jesse Hildebrand: (14:59)

That, I mean, that was, you know, of all the adventures I've been on, that experience and my time there underscored that more than any other place I'd ever been, it really was. When you walk down the street and people stop you and ask you, where have you been coming from? And I said, I came from Canada and they say, thank you so much for visiting my country. They wanna like give you the shirt off their back basically. Um, and it it's such a, yeah, I've never felt safer in a country. I've never met friendlier people in a country. I've never had better food in the country. And their landscape and culture is unbelievable and on display every single place that I went and I was there for about eight days. And it was quite unbelievable actually. So yes.

Hillary Wilkinson: (15:38)

Well, I'll add it to the list. I've got a long one. Okay. So there's another project that Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants is linked to, and that's called Backyard Bio. Can you explain what this program is?

Jesse Hildebrand: (15:55)

Yes. So a couple years ago we ran something called the Global Biodiversity Festival, which was at the time and still is the largest virtual conservation festival of all time. And its first year, it was 60 programs in three days, all to raise money for conservation around the world. We raised $30,000, which was fantastic. It was our first fundraiser for other groups. And as part of that, we said, “Hey, if you're tuning in, or if you're a speaker, go out with your phone and take a picture of some living thing near you!” and people did to the degree that we never thought possible. We had a speaker live in Kenya, walk a hundred feet away and take a picture of a lion because that's his backyard. And a woman share a picture of a horn bill. One of the most beautiful birds in the world in Uganda and then teachers and families would share Robins and blue Jays and snakes and squirrels and all these things close to home.

Jesse Hildebrand: (16:42)

And we knew we had on our hands. A good idea. And so in 2021, I took this on basically as my, my baby, this was my project. This is something that I really wanted to dive in on, in a big way. And the idea is that no matter where you are on this planet, whether you're in Southern California, Southern Ontario or wherever our listeners might be from today, there is wildlife near you in abundance. You know, when I was a kid, I always thought, uh, Amazon rainforest, East Africa, Great Barrier Reef when I thought about wildlife.  If you're in the heart of New York City, you are surrounded by a teaming amount of wildlife. You just need to know how, and we're here to look for it. And so Backyard Bio is the idea that if you go out and explore with that mindset, you will find amazing living things.

Jesse Hildebrand: (17:25)

It's the opportunity to capture those living things, be, uh, it with a sketch or a photograph, and then to share them widely with the world and to share that passion and love for nature with others. So social media, inaturalist, and seek apps, some of the best tools I've ever run across in my life for citizen science and direct classroom connections. We had 350 teachers last year register. So you'd have groups in South Korea, Texas, England, and Ontario, where they'd all go do Backyard Bio, and they'd come and they'd have a, a call like this, where they could chat and talk about the things that they found and the things that were different and the same, and make the kids in their classes, the experts of their local wildlife invested in sharing that with others. So that's the idea behind it. And it's been so thrilling to see it come to life.

Hillary Wilkinson: (18:08)

So you're saying within the Backyard Bio platform, you can have four different countries on the same call at once? And those kids are all communicating with each other?

Jesse Hildebrand: (18:19)

So classes register, they let us know where they are from around the world is free to register. You tell us your age, you tell us your name, how many students are in your class, and we'll partner you with a network of as hopefully geographically diverse teachers as possible. We did get a lot of Ontario last year we’re based in Ontario. So we expected that. But yes, that was a literal example of a group of classes that we had as one group in Backyard Bio, where they were able to share this radically different wildlife from around the world. So we're hoping that we'll have even more international groups join. And so that we can introduce the bulk of our audience in Canada and the United States with these amazing cultures and people and wildlife around the globe.

Hillary Wilkinson: (19:01)

And again, it's, is it something that others can not just teachers have to register for it? We, it can be homeschoolers or parents or?

Jesse Hildebrand: (19:13)

So for the, the direct classroom connections we wanna do keep it to classroom. So that is her classroom teachers. But the other two ways that people can be involved are for literally anybody. So social media with hashtag backyard bio, very simple, share pictures of the things you discover, share pictures of your family, or homeschool or classroom getting out and enjoying nature. And that's something we had so much of in 2021 that was shocking to me was that people didn't just share pictures of the wildlife. They shared how being outdoors made them feel. They shared that it made them more excited. They got exercise. It was a literal breath of fresh air. And so we're really gonna dive in on that this year and encourage groups, anyone participating to share how the experience has been for them and then iNaturalist. So iNaturalist is the ultimate citizen science tool to learn about local wildlife.

Jesse Hildebrand: (20:01)

And so last year we had, uh, 550 people or groups around the globe submit 57,000 observations from 6 continents and 30 countries of the things that they captured in pictures for Backyard Bio. So you can go on the iNaturalist page for the campaign and see images captured from Fiji or Liberia or New Zealand at a glance and see what community members like you found in their metaphorical backyards. And so anyone can do that. You can sign up today, it's all free for everybody. It's meant to be just an easy, engaging activity for you to learn about wildlife and have fun outdoors.

Hillary Wilkinson: (20:38)

I love this cause in the areas, this kind of my niche of the world and this area of digital wellness, we have this concept called “bridging”, which is taking an online interest and moving it to an offline experience. And I mean, you've beautifully described how, in fact that it's almost you've bridged back the other direction of taking, you know, taking more of the outside experience and coming back online. But it's, it's a very great example of the intentional use of tech, which we can help model for our kids. So of the two programs, do either of these offer activities or suggestions for offline experiences or how does that work?

Jesse Hildebrand: (21:26)

We're just starting to get into that, frankly. I mean you and the work that you've done have been a pioneer in this, and we're starting to see more groups and organizations working to make sure that people get outdoors and, and, and use tech in a meaningful way, whether sorry, outdoors or indoors, we try and make sure that our classrooms have a list of resources and activities and games and things that they can do to follow up each broadcast that we do. So at Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants, we consider our programs to be the springboard, to further learning. And frankly, the more we can get kids going outside after our programs and using that as an opportunity to learn in nature, the happier we are. So we've been really trying to emphasize that coordinating 50 broadcasts a month as a two man team and hosting.

Jesse Hildebrand: (22:10)

All of those does take up a lot of our time! But the more we've been trying to add, we, we find that teachers find that quite fulfilling. And for Backyard Bio, I think it is part and parcel with the whole initiative. Like the, the design of Backyard Bio is meant to be a bridging activity to start in a classroom, to get outside, to bring that back, to connect with others. And I think that that's the greatest joy of tech. It's never going to replace teachers in a classroom and it shouldn't, it's something that can serve to inspire new ways of looking at the world and offer those opportunities to connect in a way that you simply couldn't in person with other people from around the globe. So that's hopefully a good answer to that question.

Hillary Wilkinson: (22:51)

Yes. Okay. So for parents who want to take an easy start onto this path of, doing the Backyard Bio or something like that, what, where do you recommend that they start?

Jesse Hildebrand: (23:05)

Our websites are pretty great. I must say, I mean, I know it's a trite easy answer, but backyardbio.net, if you go there, you'll not only see how you can get involved in 2022. So all May long we’ll be running the program. The concept of Backyard Bio of course, is something that you can take and do year round with your family or classroom, but May is the official event. Uh, so head to backyardbio.net, you'll also see all the info from the last year. Uh, we ran the program nationally or internationally for the first time. So you can see that testimonial feedback, great, uh, results that we had. And we were really excited to share. And of course, if you wanna tune into our broadcast, uh, Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants, exploringbytheseat.com, very easy, you can see all our upcoming programs, any group can register, you can register to watch as a family. If you'd like, and of course you can head to our YouTube channel with the same name. If you wanna see any of those past 2,500 broadcasts, we try and make it as easy and accessible as possible. There should be no barrier to entry for anyone who wants to join in. And we'd love to have you, uh, tune in,

Hillary Wilkinson: (24:08)

Oh, well, I'd love to join you.

Jesse Hildebrand: (24:10)

Come on in. We, uh, I look forward to having you in our next program. I'll take your questions in the chat bar.

Hillary Wilkinson: (24:16)

Excellent. Okay. We have to take a short break, but when we come back, I am going to ask Jesse Hildebrand for his Healthy Screen Habit. 

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Hillary Wilkinson:

My guest today is Jesse Hildebrand, VP of Education for the organization Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants and the Nature Lover in Chief of the Backyard Bio global nature campaign. So Jesse, this is the part of the podcast where I ask each guest for a healthy screen habit, which is a tip or takeaway our listeners can put into practice in their own home. Do you have one you can share with us today?

Jesse Hildebrand: (25:32)

I sure do. And for the listeners of today's podcast and any others in this amazing series Hillary, you guys live this every time you get the chance to listen to this podcast. And that is just to take regular breaks of two minutes, even get up, go for a walk, stretch. I do this with my fiance and my host every day. We both work from home regularly and the chance to get up, do a bit of jumping jacks, walk around your dining room table, do a little stretch, make such a world of difference. It rests your eyes. It gets you active. It makes you more equipped and ready and excited to go back to whatever your job may be. And so I cannot recommend enough those little two minute breaks throughout your day, every hour, every half hour, if you have the time, uh, make a world of difference.

Hillary Wilkinson: (26:15)

Well, and I gotta say I can't, I don't know if listeners can hear it, but your energy level is like jumping off the screen at me here. And if taking two minute breaks will give me your energy level, I will happily do it. 

So if you would like more information about Exploring By the Seat Of Your Pants or Backyard Bio, please check them out @exploringbytheseat.com. And on that homepage, you can also find a link to Backyard Bio under the hashtag Backyard Bio column. So as always, I will link this information in the show notes, which you can find by going to Healthy Screen Habits.org, click on the podcast button and scroll to find this episode, which is season four, episode eight with Jesse Hildebrand. Thank you, Jesse. I cannot wait to get out with my own crew and do some adventuring.

Jesse Hildebrand: (27:09)

Fantastic. Well, I can't wait to see what you find and I look very forward to, to hearing all about it. Uh, it's been such a pleasure and honor to be on the podcast. I really appreciate this more than you know, thank so much.