|
|
Education E-update
- August 2008
BGCI Education Team
 | Making Your Botanic Garden Special
 Special events are an excellent way to highlight your education programmes, draw crowds to your botanic garden or education site, and attract media attention. In this issue of Education E-update, you'll find updates on special events at gardens in China, Malaysia, and the United States. In addition to reaching greater numbers of visitors with messages about the importance of plants and the need for their conservation, these special events also helped to build relationships with local residents and communities. Is your botanic garden celebrating a special event? Send us news about your event, and we'll include it in an upcoming Education E-update. Best wishes,
The BGCI Education Team
education@bgci.org (for general education enquiries to BGCI)
e-update@bgci.org (for Education E-update enquiries)
| | Education News from Around the World
Come to South Africa for the next BGCI Education Congress! Abstracts are now welcome for BGCI's Seventh International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens, 'Action Learning: Places, Spaces and Partnerships for Biodiversity and Human Well-being'. The congress takes place in Durban, South Africa, from 1-6 November, 2009. Submit your abstract via the official congress website. World Botanic Gardens Exhibition at the Olympics: The first world botanic gardens exhibition was unveiled in Beijing on 1 August to coincide with the 2008 Olympic Games. The exhibition was organised by BGCI in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), botanic gardens around the world, and the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Committee. Its aim is to showcase to participants of the Olympic Games and visitors from around world the ongoing efforts of botanic gardens in plant conservation and research. The exhibition contains 70 individual panels with stories demonstrating how gardens work locally and internationally to keep our planet green. North Carolina Botanical Garden launches 'BOT 2.0': The North Carolina Botanical Garden (USA) has teamed with the University of North Carolina to offer a new botany class that links nature and technology. Students in the class visit the botanic garden, photograph plant species, and then upload the images to social networking sites for discussion and sharing. The redOrbit website has a full-length story on this innovative new programme. Melaka Botanical Garden hosts Florathon 2008: More than 3000 people turned out last month at the Melaka Botanical Garden (Malaysia) for Florathon 2008. Participants in the daylong event came dressed in colourful botanical costumes and walked in a parade. Prizes were awarded for the best costumes. Kew unveils high-tech tour guides: Visitors to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK), can now rent the 'Kew Ranger', a hand-held GPS unit that displays information about the garden's entire collection. The unit uses satellite technology to mark the exact location of the visitor, and then displays information about and images of the plants in close proximity. Beijing Botanical Garden hosts International Flowers Exhibition: In conjunction with the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, the Beijing Botanical Garden (China) has been welcoming visitors to its International Flowers Exhibition. More than 1,000 plant species from more than 200 countries are being showcased, and topiaries sculpted to look like landmarks from around the world are featured. Toronto Botanical Garden features 'Puppets in the Park': This summer, the Toronto Botanical Garden (Canada) is presenting 'Apples and Oranges,' an interactive puppet show hosted by a group of multi-talented fruit and vegetable puppets. Children and families learn about healthy local food and how plants grow through songs, storytelling, and interpretive dance. Youth Community Greening Team planting school gardens: The Botanic Gardens Trust (Australia) has launched its Youth Community Greening Team to help children and youth at schools with limited resources to learn about gardening and plant conservation. The Greening Team will visit schools and teach students how to plant and maintain a community garden. Fifty schools are expected to participate in the programme during the next four years. International Mango Festival at Fairchild: Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (USA) recently hosted its 16th annual International Mango Festival. The two-day event, themed 'Mangos of Africa', featured mango tree sales, educational displays, culinary demonstrations, mango tasting, music, art, and lectures. 'Green Wave' starts rolling: The Convention on Biological Diversity has announced the launch of 'Green Wave', a multi-year worldwide educational campaign for children and youth leading up to the International Year of Biodiversity in 2010. Each year, Green Wave participants at schools around the world will plant one tree on or around 22 May - the International Day for Biological Diversity - and at 10:00 am local time, they will water the tree, thus creating a global 'green wave'. Participants will then upload photos and text to the Green Wave website to share their tree-planting stories with others. An interactive map will then go live at 20:10 local time, creating a second 'green wave'. Even more news online: Check out even more botanic garden and plant-based education news on BGCI's website, including a story about a successful community-based cactus conservation project in Mexico. You can also sign up to have weekly news updates from BGCI delivered straight to your email inbox. What's the latest at your botanic garden? Send us news from your botanic garden or education site, and we'll include it in the next issue of Education E-update. | | PlantEd Poll
It's quick and fun! Read this month's poll question and click on your response. We'll publish the results in the next Education E-update! This month's poll: How often does your botanic garden or education site offer guided tours for visitors? Click on a response below to cast your vote! Every day Every week Every month Last month, we asked whether your job requires you to do fundraising to support your plant-based education programmes. Here's what you said! 
| | Tools You Can Use
Teaching Plant Anatomy: The National Research Council Canada has published Teaching Plant Anatomy Through Creative Laboratory Exercises. The 164-page guide contains easy-to-follow instructions for a wide variety of low-cost activities for high school and university students. 'Simple Steps': From the Natural Resources Defense Council (USA), 'Simple Steps' is a web site featuring easy actions individuals can take in their everyday lives to help the environment and protect their health. Visitors can ask for advice through an online Q&A feature, and they can post their own strategies for green living on a blog. Global Science Encounters: Garden Mosaics has announced the release of its latest education resource, 'Global Science Encounters: Discovering Agricultural Biodiversity'. The DVD-based resource includes science experiments, action projects and games. 'Let's Change Our Daily Habits!': The Youth Eco-Parliament, featuring youth representatives from 10 European countries and Canada, recently released its latest report, 'Let's Change Our Daily Habits!' The report identifies and analyzes actions being taken by youth in the participating countries to promote sustainable development. Become an 'Eco Agent': Available in 24 languages, the European Environment Agency's new 'Eco Agents' website invites 9- to 14-year-olds to become undercover 'eco agents'. After creating a personal profile, each new recruit appears in an online comic strip alongside permanent characters. Each mission includes games where children earn points towards a general score. Two storylines on climate change and water quality are already online. They will be followed by stories on sustainable lifestyles, biodiversity, and air quality. Teachers can access educational material as well as a list of local websites where they can find more information about environmental issues. 'Media as Partners in ESD': From UNESCO, 'Media as Partners in Education for Sustainable Development' offers guidance for professionals in their efforts to report on sustainable development issues. The guide also includes a model for media training on ESD. Have you got an education resource that you can't do without? Send us your most valuable tools or resources, and we'll include them in an upcoming issue of Education E-update. | | Housekeeping
To subscribe to Education E-update, use our online form. Note that for extra security, we use a "double opt-in" sign-up process. This means that once you fill out the subscription form, you will receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. You must confirm your subscription in order to begin receiving Education E-update. To unsubscribe from Education E-update, simply reply to this email with "unlist" in the subject line. For information about how we protect your privacy, see our Privacy Policy. To reuse content from Education E-update in your own publication, send us an email. Feel free to forward this newsletter, however. | | | | August 2008 | | In the Spotlight This month, we shine the spotlight on Mark Paterson, Tertiary Education Coordinator at the Eden Project (UK). If you would like to be "In the Spotlight", send us an email. How long have you worked in plant-based education? Formally: 7.5 years. Informally: 20 years. How did you become involved in plant-based education? Training and working in a variety of botanic gardens around the world has allowed me to consistently work with public audiences and students. I subsequently consolidated this range of experiences by formally training as a teacher at college and university level. What would you say your philosophy is on education and learning? So often I work with students who appear to have the perception that education is either a societal dictate or a process. I fervently believe education should be exciting and dynamic, and provide an opportunity for all to not only understand the natural world, but appreciate their own existing knowledge while gaining the skill and pleasure in linking, sharing, and applying further information. What is your most memorable moment as a plant-based educator? Both past and present it is working with groups and introducing them to plants that they recognize and associate with their own experiences. Almost always, such moments allow students to recognize that their own extensive knowledge base has academic application. What is your favourite teaching technique? Providing experiential opportunities, plus group work and discussion or debate. What teaching resource could you not do without? My voice - not the ability to talk per se, but the ability to project my voice. When teaching in an outdoor environment, all too often one's voice can become lost against other sounds/elements. What is the one thing you want your audiences to go away knowing? That they know more than they think they do, and so often the pleasure of learning and taking on knowledge is the application and linking of new information with their own prior knowledge experiences. What one piece of advice can you offer to an educator starting up an education programme in a botanic garden? Focus on face-to-face communication and use the resources you have at hand, and then gradually build further resources. What is your favourite plant? Boy, what a question - so much choice! Trees are so majestic, and the stunning candle-like flowers of the horse chestnut always remind me of a "living chandelier". So, Aesculus hippocastanum. For more information about education programmes at the Eden Project, email Mark Paterson visit the Eden Project website. | | | | | | What We're Reading  The Emerald Planet, by David Beerling. Part history, part scientific narrative, The Emerald Planet explores the role plants have played throughout time in influencing environmental change. This book is especially relevant given the emerging impacts of climate change. Click on the image to buy this book from BGCI's Amazon bookstore. | | | | | | Calling All Photographers! A new category, 'World Botanic Garden,' has been included in 2009's Garden Photographer of the Year competition. BGCI will receive 10 percent of the revenue raised through the entries to this category. Funds will be used for our work in environmental education in botanic gardens through training, workshops and conferences. | | | | | | Join BGCI in South Africa! BGCI's Seventh International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens will take place in November 2009 in Durban, South Africa. Visit the official congress website for more information. | | | | | | Looking for Back Issues of Education E-update? Visit the E-update archives to read all past issues. | | | | | | Spread the News! Please forward this email to your education colleagues or to others who have an interest in plant-based conservation education. | | | | | | | | | Education E-update is a free e-newsletter published monthly by Botanic Gardens Conservation International. Botanic Gardens Conservation International
www.bgci.org
+44 (0) 20 8332 5953 This message was sent by Botanic Gardens Conservation International
Descanso House, 199 Kew Road, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 3BW, UK. |  |
|
|
