Macroinvertebrates gigapixel project wins IXD award

This week, The Aquatic Macoroinvertebrates Collection won the Engaging category of the national IXD Awards. The Interaction Design (IXD) Awards recognize and celebrate examples of excellence in Interaction Design across domains, channels, environments and cultures. 

The macroinvertebrates project leverages an emerging class of gigapixel image technology to make the process of learning to see and identify insects more visual and engaging, without sacrificing scientific detail. Accurately identifying stream insects is a vital aspect of tracking water quality and protecting the health of watersheds, but it requires developing observational skills and knowledge to be able to participate. The site enables a variety of learners to more fully engage and participate in monitoring, environmental decision-making, and activism around the protection and conservation of our freshwater water resources.

Big congratulations to the entire Macroinvertebrates team! 

More info about the IXD Awards and the other entries can be found here.

Gigapan in Antarctica

I am a first grade teacher on a scientific research team deployed at Palmer Station, Antarctica.  We are here studying a wingless fly called Belgica antarctica.   It is the southernmost, free-living insect in Antarctica and it's the largest animal that remains on land throughout the year.  As the team's educational outreach coordinator, I used Gigapan technology to connect students in my school district as well as nationally with scientific research taking place at the bottom of the world.  Antarctic Gigapan images can be found on my team's outreach blog at www.crestwoodexplorestheworld.org along with descriptive information and scavenger hunt challenges.  Gigapan gives (preschool-grade 12) students an opportunity to explore detailed images of the Antarctic environment, provoking thoughtful questions and higher levels of learning.

GigaPan: Democratizing information and bolstering bioliteracy



Fine Fellow Alex Smith wrote a fantastic article about his experience with gigapan for the quarterly newsletter of the International Barcode for Live Project.
Alex concludes, "There are many parallels between the GigaPan and DNA barcoding as complementary forces for democratizing information and bolstering bioliteracy. Both are publicly accessible, both will be annotated through time by a community of experts and non-experts alike and both exist as a synthetic connection from the digital to the natural world.
One key to our capacity to understand the changes caused by the increasing pressures of the urbanization and degradation of natural environments will be ongoing monitoring through time. If such monitoring is democratized and publically available as DNA barcodes and GigaPans, then a marginalized environment may become more valued by the human population."

 Check out the full article at http://ibol.org/gigapan/.