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NSF Grant - $2.49 Million
National Science Foundation Grant for four years, education, website, plant key, $2.49 million.
Contact:
Steven Ziglar, Communications Director
508-877-7630, ext. 3503
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News for Immediate Release - October 1, 2009
Grant for Botanical Education
Framingham, MA - New England Wild Flower Society received a 4-year $2.49 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop an education program to increase botanical learning. Based on the Society's soon to be published new flora for the New England region,
Go Botany is a multi-faceted program designed to improve informal scientific education in botany among novice learners and citizen scientists in New England and also train educators to integrate innovative web tools into lessons in botany and plant identification.
The grant, given through the Informal Science Education Division at NSF examines the use of web-based resources to increase the public’s interest and ability to learn botany. Currently, many informal science educators are not trained in botany and do not feel comfortable teaching plants to their students. For individual learners, botany is often difficult because there are so many species to learn and the vocabulary is difficult. The challenge is to develop an educational system on the web that can help both teachers and students.
Currently, the Society is completing an online key to the over 300 woody plants of
New England through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services
(IMLS). The NSF grant allows the Societyto expand this simple online key to the over 4,000 plant taxa along with developing two other types of keys so that the full range of users from amateur to professional will be able to use the key which best suits their level of expertise. Our partners for this project include the Montshire Museum in Norwich,VT; theYale Peabody Museum in New Haven, CT; and the Chewonki Foundation inWiscasset, ME. These three institutions will test the educational components and keys on a variety of users from beginners to experts and from urban to rural.
Part of the online program tailors a customized version of the flora for a defined area, allowing visitors to learn the plants that are found at a particular site. Of particular interest is the display of keys on mobile devices such as mobile phones.
As many people have experienced, learning botany by identifying plants in the field with a mentor is often the best way to learn a science that has many species and a difficult vocabulary. The Society will also test this web-based resource on mobile devices to see if an electronic field guide can act as
a mentor.
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