Bioblitz #4: The Perfect Use of Technology

Swamp Rabbit Habitat - The Bottomland Hardwood Forest
by Amy Ouchley

I learned so much at Bioblitz at Jean LaFitte National Historical Park and Preserve in May, but one of my most valuable insights was to see how environmentally conscious people are using technology.  I shared my great experience with meeting one of the creators of Project Noah in Bioblitz #3.  Now I want to share two more wonderful online resources.

Inside the National Geographic tent I met another innovative environmental educator.  Her name is Marie Studer and she is the Learning and Education Director at Harvard University for an online resource called “Encyclopedia of Life” (http://eol.org/discover).  She gave me a quick overview of this resource and I think it is perfect for teachers. 

This comes from their flyer.  “The Encyclopedia of Life brings together information about all life on earth – text, images, video, sounds, maps, classifications and more – all freely available on-line. “

Of course when I got home I immediately went to the site, registered, and discovered that it was very easy to use.  There is a good tutorial at their home page.  I built my first collection and called it “Swamp Rabbit Habitat – The Bottomland Hardwood Forest.”  To build the collection all I had to do was type the name of an organism that I wanted in my collection and it would bring up the resources related to that organism, including text and photos.  I could add this information to my collection.  Now I can add more organisms to that collection or I can create a different collection.  I can see that this would be a good classroom tool for students to build collections of organisms around the school or anywhere else.

Next I used my collection to create a “Memory Game.”  I discovered that I had to register at this site also (http://fieldguides.eol.org) to access the tools.  According to Studer, I will be able to create Field Guides in July 2013.  I made my memory game public so if you want to play it, go to the site and register.

Another resource is called “The Great NATURE Project” and it is sponsored by National Geographic (NG) and will be September 21-29. NG invites you to share plants and animals from your world with the whole world.  Celebrate the amazing and diverse life on our planet and help NG achieve a Guinness World Records© title for the largest online photo album of animals.  Find out more and submit a photo at (http://greatnatureproject.org).  You can create a Great NATURE Project mission at Project Noah and you can start adding photos for this project now.  I have done this and you can follow me on the Project Noah site.

I hope you will visit these sites and find out how to use them to help document the biological diversity of our planet.