This project is funded under the eContentplus programme , a multiannual Community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable.

Species Identification e-Tools for Education

ecp-2006-edu-410019

Targeted Project

Starting date: 03.09.2007

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Identification of organisms: key to information

The identification of organisms is fundamental to biology. The accurate identification provides a correct name through which detailed information can be unlocked. For example, taxonomic descriptions, ecological relations, economic values, conservation status, legislation status and genetic code.

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Goal

KeyToNature (K2N) is focused on providing common access to data and interactive educational tools for the identification of organisms in order to enhance the knowledge of biodiversity at all educational levels. The long-term goal is to enhance the knowledge of biodiversity at all educational levels in an innovative way.

Target audience: primary and secondary school

students and teachers, university students and lectures.

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Aim of the e-learning solutions…

..is NOT:

to learn and remember e.g. 10 of the 80 species around the school,

BUT to

train observation skills,

train analytical skills by understanding how to decompose a complex organism into comparable units,

understand the diversity of life on earth.

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KeyToNature (K2N) network

Total budget 4.8 Mil €

EC Contribution 2.4 Mil €

EC Contribution rate 50% of total eligible costs

Duration 36 months

14 Partners from 11 EU Countries of which: 7 data providers, 6 edu-technical partners, 1 project management SME

12 Work-packages (WPs)

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The Consortium

Technical University of Cluj-Napoca – RO

Bikam ltd – BG

T & B e Associati Srl – IT

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven - Centre For Usability Research - BE

evolaris privatstiftung – AT

Giunti Labs – IT

Friedrich Alexander Universität - FIM Neues Lernen – DE

Natural History Museum London – UK

Slovenian Museum of Natural History - SI

University of Tartu – Institute of Ecology & Earth Sciences - EE

Real Jardìn Botànico - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientìficas - ES

Biologische Bundesanstalt für Land und Forstwirtschaft - DE

ETI Bioinformatics – NL

Università degli Studi di Trieste – Dipartimento di Biologia - IT

E-learning Technology Provider

Educational Databasing and Digital Libraries expertise

Project Management, Business Model Development

Usability Expertise

ICT, IPR, & Business Model development

Scientific e-learning expertise

Pedagogy & Scientific e-learning expertise

Data provider

Data provider

Data provider

Data provider

Data provider

Data provider, Interoperability, Databasing

Data provider & Coordinator

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A user-centric approach is followed by KeyToNature.

School involvement is at the centre of the project. The solutions will be targeted at local needs and contexts, i.e. e- and m-learning solutions to identify and learn about the organisms that can be found in the school garden, the local park, etc. These solutions will be appropriate for different levels of knowledge and formal learning as they will:

not be tied to rigid systematics,

will require different levels of observation of attributes to identify an organism,

will cover a limited number of local species which can be modified according to the level of education: the smaller is the number of species, the easier to use is the identification tool.

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Several “classical” keys include organisms occurring in widely different areas or

ecological conditions.

The “difficulty” of identification tools tends to increase with the number of organisms

which they include

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The New Approach (1)

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The new approach permits to automatically produce identification tools restricted to

small subsets of organisms

e.g. “the plants of our school-garden”

!!

The new approach (2)

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Needs analysis

More than 200 teachers from primary school to university participated in focus groups and interviews conducted in all partner countries. This survey resulted in a pedagogical and educational needs analysis report.

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Main objectives of K2N

Increase access to, and simplify the use of eLearning tools for identifying species

Address educational content interoperability

Optimise the effectiveness and the quality of educational content

Add value to existing educational content by providing multilingual access

Suggest best practices to address barriers to educational use, production, exposure, discovery and acquisition.

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K2N and TDWG

K2N adopted the TDWG standard for descriptive data (SDD) as one of the solutions to achieve its goals. A challenge in K2N will be to adapt SDD to ‘atomized’ identification data and to standardize species-ID data sets so they can be combined and re-used in packages adhering to the standard. SDD will be used at a large scale in K2N to exchange descriptive data in production quality tools.

K2N mobilises a critical mass of content: Less than a year after K2N started 1,320 identification keys in 11 languages are listed at http://www.keytonature.eu. Many of these keys are custom made versions derived from a central K2N data set.

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Secundary Data

Apart from primary identification data (characters and states), K2N will also unlock a wealth of secondary data (illustrations, descriptions) available in Europe, using the same shared mechanisms. A survey of secondary data identified 241,421 items, mainly still images (172,426) and taxon pages (59,004).

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K2N technical infrastructure

Linnaeus II

Frida

eFlora

K2N portal

SDD

E-learningenvironment

MediaWiki

SCORM API

Primary and Secundary data Metadata

Key repository

import

SDD

Teacher

Secundary data (multimedia)

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Experiments

In 2008 / 2009 the K2N project will conduct several experiments with web-based and mobile identification services for educational applications. For example, the ‘Mobile Nature Guide’ for schools in The Netherlands provides access to identification data and user-defined keys covering more than 5,000 plants, animals and fungi. Developed mechanisms will permit automatic production of identification tools for different media: The Internet, mobile and desktop applications.

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Developed software

Software to identify species or other taxa will be made available under the name IBIS - Interactive Biodiversity Identification Software. Intended users range from school children or citizen scientists to ecologists or taxonomists. The identification keys can be embedded in Content Management Systems or Wikis.

Software will be made available as open source software at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ibis-id/

Some examples:

Multi-access key (Technical University of Cluj-Napoca )

Mobile key (ETI): http://ip52.eti.uva.nl/soortenbank/mobiel.php

Flex viewer with combined key (ETI): http://145.18.162.102/flex/SDD_05/bin-debug/SDD_05.html

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Thank you for your attention!

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Genus

Family

Order

Species

Ovary inferior Ovary superior

Stamens hairy

Carpels 5, fusedCarpels 4, free

Stamens glabrous

Fruit dehiscent Fruit non dehiscent

The traditional approach, developed prior to the computer era, is mainly based on classification. It first requires the identification of Order, Family, and Genus. The characters distinguishing Orders, Families and Genera are usually difficult, hence these identification tools are also difficult.

The Traditional Approach ….

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The Baseline – Books

Books are written by experts for experts.

They constitute useful reference, but lack the flexibility of PC-based tools (hypertext, multimedia, searching etc.)

And above all …

Classification is not Identification!

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Genus

Family

Order

Species

Flower red, leaves divided

Flower white, leaves entire

In the new approach, the characters distinguishing the organisms are organised into a database, and the identification tools can select those characters which render the identification easier, including those which are not relevant for biological classification.

The New Approach

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The New Approach

The new guides are easily adapted and available on different media, which can be used in different contexts: a) Internet, b) DVD and CD-ROMS, c) PDAs, d) hard copies etc.

KeyToNature identification tools work on several media.

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WP1 Project coordination and management

WP2 Analysis of users' needs and demand

WP4 Addressing access, searchability, use and re-use of secondary data and items

WP11 Dissemination & exploitation of thee-contents and eLearning products

WP5 Addressing, analysis and testing exchangeand interoperability of identification data

WP9 Educational contents reengineering

WP6 Interfaces, usability and mobility

WP7 Pedagogy and didactics

WP8 User experience

WP10 IPR issues

WP3 Inventory of existing educational products

WP12 Monitoring Evaluation and assessment

The Workplan

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The Baseline – Available tools and associated problems

Many PC-based tools exist for identification purposes, e.g. CISRO DELTA, DiversityDescriptions, FRIDA, Linnaeus II, Lucid 2 & 3, XPer2,..

Problems associated with these tools can be clustered into 4 categories:

Exchange of secondary data (sounds, images,..)

Exchange of primary data (embedded in the tools for generating keys)

IPR issues

Suitability to support learning at various levels

? ?? ?

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Many PC-based tools exist for identification purposes, e.g. CISRO DELTA, DiversityDescriptions, FRIDA, Linnaeus II, Lucid 2 &

3, XPer2AT THE MOMENT THEY ARE ISOLATED AND CANNOT EXCHANGE DATA

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Exchange of secondary data is not a difficult problem as all tools use standard formats like jpg, gif, etc.

!!

!

DATA EXCHANGE - SECONDARY DATA

(images, sounds, names, maps etc.)

!

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Exchange of primary data is much more difficult due to the different data formats used by different identification software.

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??????

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DATA EXCHANGE - PRIMARY DATA

(those embedded in the programs generating the keys)

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IPR issues constitute one of the major constraints to data exchange, use and re-use.

In particular the novel and advanced nature of the educational products aggregated within the project raises some fundamental questions which until now were rarely considered in the field of IPR. There are 2 principal aspects:

IPR problems related to secondary data must be carefully examined, but basically they do not constitute a novelty.

Primary data embedded in the software which produce the interactive keys can potentially generate a series of IPR problems whose solution still needs clarification. The main question is:

The software in use permits extraction from the general Key of an infinite number of apparently fully original keys, by selecting subsets of species or changing the hierarchy of characters. In such cases who is the real author of the new products? The person who in a relatively short time has selected the species and changed the order of characters or the numerous specialists which have provided the data?

?

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Available tools are often made for experts and do not support learning at various levels.

Interfaces are too complicated and use a technical language which is not appropriate for non-experts (school-children).

The tools support identification of species only, they are not embedded in a didactic concept.

No interfaces to learning management systems exist.

…

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KeyToNature mobilises a critical mass of content (1)

790 Identification keys (mostly derived from a central dataset)

Identification tools: languages

42,7%

24,5%

30,0%

0,6%

1,0%

0,3%

0,9%

2,8%

Italian

English

Spanish

Dutch

Slovenian

Estonian

German

Group of Organisms: % of Identification tools

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KeyToNature mobilises a critical mass of content (2)

Groups of organisms: N° of Species

4003000

3000

20000

23030

Animals

Plants

Lichens

Non-lichenised fungi

Algae

About 50.000 taxa

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Best practices of existing solutions will be integrated.

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A special focus is laid on interface usability.

Easy to use keys, well illustrated and

described by multimedia documents,

enable even non-experts to

easily identify species.

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e-Learning Solution User Experience

The e-learning solutions will support different pedagogical models and aim at optimal user experience.

ACCESSIBILITY

FUNCTIONALITY

USABILITY

LIKEABILITY SOCIABILITY PLAYABILITY

Pedagogical Model 1 Pedagogical Model 2 Pedagogical Model n…

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By sending an expert to the schools individual solutions can be delivered.

School

3 - The expert gets in touch with teachers and discusses their project4 - The expert sends a list of species to KeyToNature (e.g.”the plants of the pond”)

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A fast first proposal is delivered within days rather than weeks.

5 - Within 2 days, KeyToNature sends to expert and teachers:a) a first Internet version of the guide,b) a first textual version.

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The generated keys are tested by end-users and experts.

School

6 - Expert + teachers test the keys and send their proposals (e.g. changes of terminology, etc.) back to KeyToNature.

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KeyToNature deliverables are identification tools for several media.

OK

7 - Within a week expert + teachers (co-authors!) receive the final:

1) Internet version2) CD-Rom version3) Version for PDAs4) Textual version

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Linking with the globe …

Visit: www.keytonature.eu

Encyclopedia of Life

GBIF

OPAL

Identify Life

Lifewatch

EDIT

Species 2000

Marbef

Fishbase