Listen to Scott Stuntz's WVIK News Focus. He joined Western Illinois University students for a recent, Living Lands and Waters workshop in Rock Island. --------------------->>>
Summary:
A year after it was built, a Quad Cities-based environmental group invited local college students onto its "floating classroom." Living Lands and Waters hosted students from Western Illinois University for an environmental workshop. The barge was built over the last couple of years, and even though this was the first group of students from the Quad Cities, it has hosted many other student and teacher workshops at other locations.
The barge is anchored near Rock Island's Sunset Marina, where Living Lands and Waters founder, Chad Pregracke, told the students a large pile of metal barrels stacked in the river first drove him to start cleaning it up.
Mike Quinlogan, a former Rock Island middle school teacher, leads the workshops, and says they can be much more effective than traditional classes on land.
The WIU students also listened to a presentation by a specialist from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and another by Brent Pregracke, Chad's brother and Mississippi River fisherman.