yum was invited by Helen Thompson from the Centre for eCommerce & Communications (CeCC) to support their work in the BCG Wildlife Ponds project. Still in its early stages, this project will demonstrate and promote the use of new web technologies to enhance biodiversity on-farm. As irrigation channels are moved into pipe systems, a decline in wildlife species who populated the channels has been documented. This project aims to support farmers to build ponds to rebuild that population. Web 2 can help share success in returning sustainability to these wildlife populations. Stakeholders gathered in Horsham in late September to explore a variety of web 2 tools to enable farmers to contribute information from the field about wildlife diversity and pond management.
Many of the tools we used require the Flash Player installed on your computer. This is free and small quick download. You can get it here if you cannot see all the items on this page.
We used a website called iPadio which enables you to phone in a contribution from your pond. Participants used this tool initially to share how they got involved in this project:
(Click on the play button and ensure your computer speakers are on and turned up)
Andrew from the Centre for eCommerce & Communications (CeCC) from filmed some of the workshop and published this to YouTube to demonstrate video publishing to the web for immediate sharing:
Participants also explored the use of Google Maps to share geographical data. Here is a map developed in the session showing their farm location, description and images:
View Wimmera in a larger map
Participants used Flickr to upload and share photographs from a digital or mobile phone camera:
Participants explored a variety of concepts. Check out the PowerPoint from the session below:
A great project and fantastic use of Web 2 tools for recording and tracking the return of wildlife diversity in the wake of the ecosystem demise with the shift of above ground irrigation channels to pipes.
CEO of iPadio Mark Smith has picked up on the project – he has a background as a biologist and we hope to keep him informed. He suggests the bandwidth for voice through iPadio will increase giving new opportunites in this project to capture highly resolution sound recordings of frog calls from the farmers paddocks.
what an amazing project, so many layers, so many frogs…