The New England Wild Flower Society, in collaboration with the Yale Peabody Museum, Montshire Museum of Science, and the Chewonki Foundation, is implementing the Go-Botany project, a multi-faceted, web-based botany user interface. "Go-Botany: Integrated Tools to Advance Botanical Learning," improves botanical education by opening plant study to a larger and more diverse segment of the population including novices, citizen scientists, and informal science educators. The project is designed to integrate a variety of web tools and mobile communication devices to facilitate learning about botany and plant conservation with a focus on native and naturalized plants in New England. Project deliverables include an online database of New England plants; online keys to over 4,000 species of New England flora; a customizable user interface; My Plants personal webpages; an outdoor exhibit that incorporates mobile resources; training programs for informal science educators and educational programs for the public. Projected impacts include increased attraction to and engagement in botanical learning for public audiences and improved teaching abilities by informal science education professionals through the application of user friendly, digital resources on mobile communication devices. Go-Botany significantly impacts the field of informal science education by changing the way that informal learners learn about plants by removing barriers through the use of free online materials, mentoring, and user created resources. This project is projected to reach over 46,000 youth, adults, and informal educators in workshops and via the Go-Botany website.
Go Botany is the future of field guides! Imagine taking a walk in the woods. An unusual tree attracts your attention. You whip out your iPad and link to Go Botany (www.newenglandwild.org/gobotany). Answer a handful of easy questions, and you've narrowed down your list of possible species by the process of elimination. Observe more aspects of your plant more closely (the application will prompt you with key characteristics to examine), and suddenly you notice many interesting features you hadn't seen before. You successfully identify your plant; the application ports you to a wealth of information about the species. Turns out this species is uncommon in your area! You send a message to the PlantShare commuinity to double-check your identification and share your find with other plant fans. Next time you take a walk in the woods, you'll look for that plant and know what features to note. Technology does not need to alienate us from nature; rather, we can use its innovative products to increase our attentiveness and appreciation. Go Botany consists of five products that comprise a truly "next-generation" field guide to plants: 1) a unique, interactive Simple Key to 1200 of the common native and naturalized plants of New England; 2) a similarly interactive Full Key to all 3500 species, subspecies, and varieties in the region; 3) an illustrated, interactive Dichotomous Key, which serves as the definitive online flora for formal science educators and experienced botanists; 4) PlantShare, a collaborative citizen-science portal where plant enthusiasts at all levels of expertise can share their finds, get expert advice on plants, and develop plant checklists (including local floras of schoolyards and conservation areas); and 5) Teaching Tools–resources for educators who want to integrate Go Botany into their teaching inside and outside the classroom, with specific information on how Go Botany helps meet New England and National Science Frameworks. Illustrated with over 37,000 color photographs and drawings, Go Botany is beautiful, engaging, and user-friendly. Audiences for Go Botany include: youth and adults curious about nature and science; visitors to nature centers, museums, and botanical gardens; amateur botanists; professional biologists; and informal and formal science educators who teach others about the ecosystem services that plants provide. Intellectual Merit: Go Botany provides the definitive, continually updated database on hundreds of characteristics of thousands of plant species found throughout the eastern U. S. and Canada. The open-source Go Botany software uses a novel, intelligent algorithm to deliver questions, calculated in real-time, that most efficiently allow a user to identify a plant; this software represents a major computational advance. The design of Go Botany is intuitive, creatively repurposing elements of online commerce to "sell" science to a broad audience. During design, we conducted extensive user-tests to establish how Go Botany promotes learning among diverse age groups. Our observational data have led to new insights about cognition: how people recognize and discern natural objects in the landscape and overcome "plant-blindness." Broader Impacts: Go Botany has been demonstrated to 6,000+ educators and learners and is used in hundreds of learning settings, including high schools, Master Gardeners workshops, university botany and forestry classes, and dozens of other educational institutions. Our institutional partners on the project have made Go Botany widely accessible to a very diverse audience of youth and adults. The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History uses it in after-school programs to engage urban high school students to identify invasive plants. The Montshire Museum of Natural History has devised a customized Go Botany guide to their grounds, and developed a permanent exhibit, Hemlock Holmes, to help visitors identify plants. The Concord Museum (MA) has devised a Go Botany key to the town's flora, as part of an exhibit on changing climate and species. The Smithsonian Institution is developing a "Go Orchid" key to all the orchid species of North America based on our software and data. Since its public launch in 2012, the website has received over 1.5 million page views, and the number of unique visits per day has increased ten-fold. Frequent feedback to our public comment portal, and our external evaluations, indicate that people with little former experience in botany or plant identification are using the application successfully to discover plant biology. In recognition of its merit as an educational tool, the New England Environmental Educators' Alliance recently awarded Go Botany the 2013 Maria Pirie Program Award. With NSF funding, Go Botany has been carefully designed to entice diverse lifelong learners to get outside, explore plants, strengthen their observational and scientific skills, and share their discoveries. Go Botany is recognized internationally as a model for using technology to engender fascination with the natural world. As formal botany education declines in schools and universities, Go Botany represents a new way to communicate the central importance of plants and natural communities to human welfare.
