TECHNOLOGY

Campers use Web 2.0 technology to study botany and conservation

Jane Greenberg, right, from the School of Information and Library Science, helps area students cultivate an interest in botany as part of Carolina’s first BotCamp offered earlier this month.

Fourteen students from the Triangle area participated in the University’s first BotCamp July 31 – Aug. 2. BotCamp is part of BOT 2.0, an innovative program that uses Web 2.0 technology to attract students from under-represented populations to learn about botany.

The program features a curriculum that weaves together four key themes: botany, environmental conservation, the use of social technologies and metadata literacy. Using digital cameras and camera phones to capture images of plants and trees in the field, the campers downloaded the photos to Web 2.0 social computing technologies such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and blogs. In the classroom, they used metadata tagging for classification of each image.

The camp included outings with botanical experts to the Coker Arboretum, the North Carolina Botanical Garden, Mason Farm and other natural surroundings, and sessions in information management and technology at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS).

BOT 2.0 is a collaboration among the SILS Metadata Research Center, botanical garden, UNC Herbarium, Renaissance Computing Institute and Information Technology Services. The two-year program, funded by the National Science Foundation, is led by Jane Greenberg, Francis Carroll McColl Term Professor and director of the Metadata Research Center at SILS, and Alan Weakley, curator of the UNC Herbarium. 

For more information about BOT 2.0, refer to: ils.unc.edu/mrc/bot-20.