Education focused programming is planned to begin in earnest in January 2011. This will be initiated in Vancouver, British Columbia (the region where the project is currently physically based), but the project is ultimately open to a wide range of educational champions in any locale.
Programming will be varied and will likely include:
1. Teachers, especially at the primary and intermediate levels, being actively courted to participate in various aspects of the project. This will likely include materials that allow children to play and interact with the cards so that learning objectives related to biodiversity, the environment, and science (in general) can be broached. Here, students and teachers can also play a role in the project by providing input for “card sets” that are especially useful (i.e. local specific sets, or theme specific) in their classroom
TO DO
2. We plan to be working on, or possibly will have already produced, a widget for the phylo website that allows “custom” production of cards. In other words, a place on the website, where a classroom can easily make their own cards with their own images and their own notes embedded. This allows the possibility of “classroom specific cards” which we think would make a great classroom activity. Please contact David Ng (db at interchange dot ubc dot ca) if you think you can help with this, or alternatively leave a comment at the forum.
3. To coincide with this widget (and depending on the specifics of the widget produced), the AMBL lab will provide short teacher workshops (and corresponding video tutorials) to facilitate this process if necessary.
4. We are very keen to evaluate the impact of these cards in the education of students. Furthermore, in the spirit of the crowd source nature of the project, we welcome any academic or research group that is interested in evaluating the educational merit of these cards. It would be lovely to see whether above and beyond producing a fun game, it also leads to children having a better understanding of biodiversity and environmental concepts. Interested parties, please contact David Ng at db at interchange dot ubc dot ca.
