Welcome Welcome to the Making Ecology Simple and Accessible project. We are glad to have you here! In this document you’ll find some important information about our project. Who are we? We are a group of Brazilian scientists and educators and we are tired of not having enough resources to teach ecology in our classrooms. We want to build a platform of open educational resources to to democratise the access to such material and to recognize the work of who creates it. Why are we doing it? Have you ever spent a lot of time searching for resources and activities to use in your Ecology classes? Did you every wish you could adapt them to your particular context, or translate them into another language? Or have you ever spent so many hours of your precious time to create a very good material that was used only by teachers close to your social circle, even though you know that it would be great for many educators? Did you ever get frustrated because your work was not recognized, somehow? We know this feeling. Although there is a ton of pedagogical resources about Ecolgy online, they are scattered through multiple websites and they are usually not adaptive at all. Because of that, teachers have to use it in a way that may not be perfect (e.g. in a different language). As creators of educational resources, ,we often have to invest extra-hours ellaborating this material, as they are not recognized as valid outputs of our work.
So, what are we doing? We are building a community based online platform ofopen educational resources about ecological concepts which teachers can use with their students to make the classes more friendly, interesting and, therefore, participative. Each resource will be unique and citable. We’ll promote a space where researchers, educators, teachers, and enthusiasts can make open ecological educational resources that can be used, edited, rated and discussed so teachers and educators could use it in their classes or other events. How are we doing it? At the moment, we are modeling the project and organizing the goals. But there is a draft of what we want to do: Phase 1 – Organizing existing resources
1 – Gather a team 2 - Create the platform 3 – Curate the most common ecological subjects taught in school 4 – Search in the web for ecological resources that could be used in schools 5 – Gather all links and organize them by topics in our platform 6 - Spread the word
Phase 2 – Creating our own resources 1 - Ask for teachers of biology/ecology and others that use this kind of resource to answer a survey about lack of resources based on their experiences. 2 – Analyze the answers and compile the subjects 3 - Share online our needing for resources 4 - Receive resources, review it and
Phase 3 - Dreaming big (?) A journal were each resource posted online has one publication with some context and instructions of use and maybe some experience reports
How can you contribute? Since we are in phase 1, we need three types of contributors
Anyone: Do you know any ecological resources in pt-br available online? Send us the link so we can put it on our site. [Link form]. Do you have any suggestions about how this platform could be or what it must have to be a good platform? Send it to us via this [suggestion form]
Brazilian teachers and educators We need your expertise to know what the ecology content that is taught at Brazilian schools and how it is organized. We want to hear from you how you'd like our platform to be. What do you miss the most when searching for resources online? You can contribute via this [suggestion form] or via meetings or text talks
Creators Do you have any resources online? Send us the link so our platform could redirect it to your site. We want to hear from you how you like our platform to be. Which features it must have to be a good platform to share your work? Do you have time and want to learn and to participate more actively in our project? Tell us a little about yourself [form] and we could find some functions for you
Thank you for READingME. We hope our project fits your necessities <3