KeyToNature: a European project for teaching biodiversity
Pier Luigi Nimis, Stefano Martellos
Abstract
KeyToNature is a 3-year targeted European project, approved in the framework of the e-Contentplus Programme, addressing important issues of the ongoing digital revolution. It strives to achieve a pan-European approach to teaching biodiversity, focusing on the identification of organisms.
Species identification has been based mainly on paper-printed tools, such as classical dichotomous keys which are sometimes based on systematic hierarchies. Such keys have several educational drawbacks. Several software packages have been developed in recent decades, which enable the rapid and esay creation of interactive identification tools which are not necessarily based on systematics. Such tools have a high educational content, they may be much more user-friendly than the traditional paper-printed keys, and can be easily adapted to different educational levels. Their introduction into the educational world will overcome one of the most serious gaps in biodiversity education: the lack of identification tools adapted to user-specified needs. The new tools require the connection of different, presently scattered, databases, including those of images, sounds, textual descriptions, and thesauri of scientific and common names.
KeyToNature aims at improving the searchability and usability of existing digital contents to support the emergence of a European educational service related to teaching and learning biodiversity with novel, advanced, powerful approaches, filling a serious gap at European Union (EU) level. The new technologies raise a series of novel issues and problems, which require solutions at the European level.
The main objectives of KeyToNature are to:
1) Increase access and simplify use of e-learning tools for identifying biodiversity;
2) Improve interoperability among existing databases for the creation of identification tools;
3) Optimise educational efficiency and increase quality of educational contents;
4) Add value to existing identification tools by providing multilingual access; and
5) Suggest best practices against barriers that prevent the use, production, exposure, discovery and acquisition of the digital contents required for designing the identification tools.
A selection of primary and secondary schools and university courses in the EU will be involved in testing, using and accessing the educational products of KeyToNature. The project mobilises 14 partners from 11 EU countries. It includes leading centres in biology, pedagogy and education and information technology, plus three small/medium enterprises (SMEs). International data standards will be used to make existing e-contents more accessible, usable and exploitable in formal education, both for face-to-face and distance learning. Using the business model to be developed, the educational tools will be accessible beyond the end of the project.
Species identification has been based mainly on paper-printed tools, such as classical dichotomous keys which are sometimes based on systematic hierarchies. Such keys have several educational drawbacks. Several software packages have been developed in recent decades, which enable the rapid and esay creation of interactive identification tools which are not necessarily based on systematics. Such tools have a high educational content, they may be much more user-friendly than the traditional paper-printed keys, and can be easily adapted to different educational levels. Their introduction into the educational world will overcome one of the most serious gaps in biodiversity education: the lack of identification tools adapted to user-specified needs. The new tools require the connection of different, presently scattered, databases, including those of images, sounds, textual descriptions, and thesauri of scientific and common names.
KeyToNature aims at improving the searchability and usability of existing digital contents to support the emergence of a European educational service related to teaching and learning biodiversity with novel, advanced, powerful approaches, filling a serious gap at European Union (EU) level. The new technologies raise a series of novel issues and problems, which require solutions at the European level.
The main objectives of KeyToNature are to:
1) Increase access and simplify use of e-learning tools for identifying biodiversity;
2) Improve interoperability among existing databases for the creation of identification tools;
3) Optimise educational efficiency and increase quality of educational contents;
4) Add value to existing identification tools by providing multilingual access; and
5) Suggest best practices against barriers that prevent the use, production, exposure, discovery and acquisition of the digital contents required for designing the identification tools.
A selection of primary and secondary schools and university courses in the EU will be involved in testing, using and accessing the educational products of KeyToNature. The project mobilises 14 partners from 11 EU countries. It includes leading centres in biology, pedagogy and education and information technology, plus three small/medium enterprises (SMEs). International data standards will be used to make existing e-contents more accessible, usable and exploitable in formal education, both for face-to-face and distance learning. Using the business model to be developed, the educational tools will be accessible beyond the end of the project.