New EU project on teaching and learning biodiversity launched
The 3-year project, which is supported by the European Commission under the eContentplus Programme, was officially launched on September 3rd 2007 and is coordinated by Prof. Pier Luigi Nimis, of the Department of Biology, University of Trieste. The consortium is a public-private partnership, combining scientific, education, business and ICT expertise to develop solutions which support biodiversity teaching in formal education. With an overall budget of 4.8 Mio Euro the consortium will develop new e-learning and m-learning tools that enable the identification of local plants and animals and give a greater understanding of biodiversity and its relevance to our world today in an engaging and playful way (“beating the book experience”). School involvement is at the centre of the project. The solutions will be targeted at local needs and contexts, i.e. e- and m-learning solutions to identify and learn about the plants that can be found in the school garden, the local park, etc. These solutions will be appropriate for different levels of knowledge and formal learning as they will: • not be tied to rigid systematics • will require different levels of observation of attributes to identify species and genera • will cover a limited number of local species which can be modified according to the level of education: the smaller the number of species, the easier to use the identification tool. Each generated identification tool is provided in 4 versions for different media: 1) Internet 2) CD-rom 3) PDA 4) Printed version. First results of the project have already been released when Prof. Nimis presented the interactive key of Val Rosandra in a public cross border event organised by the Municipality of S. Dorligo della Valle, Italy. It allows for the easy identification of plants living in the famous valley close to Trieste via a web-based tool and is now available online in 5 languages under http://dbiodbs.units.it/vr/vr.html(opens in new window). Individuals and organisations interested in learning or teaching biodiversity are invited to view the project website www.keytonature.eu and to get in contact with us for further information.
Countries
Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom