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Real Time. Interactive. Educational. Immersive. |
The aim of this blog is to keep virtual ecotourists, partner organizations, and curious conservationists updated about the vEcotourism project. It will outline our current work, showcase initial vEcotours as they are developed, link to exciting upcoming technologies, promote conservation projects, host visual media from tours, and serve to keep the vEcotourism community informed and connected.
To learn more about virtual ecotourism, begin your exploration at About vEcotourism.
“Learning happens everywhere and at every age”
In this spirit, Virtual Ecotourism participated in the 4th Digital Media and Learning Competition for the first time last week. By recognising and promoting non–traditional learning in the 21st century, this competition brought together designers, entrepreneurs, technologists and educators with leading business and industry organizations to build digital badge systems and explore the ways badges can be used to help people learn, demonstrate skills and knowledge, and unlock job, educational and civic opportunities.
Following two preliminary stages of competition, vEco was selected as one of the 91 finalists to go to San Francisco. We had the unique opportunity to participate in workshops, network with many inspiring people to discuss possible collaborations and finally present our project on March 1st, 2012 to a panel of judges. Among the highly competitive pool of participants, thirty winning projects were selected (competition results).
We are honored to have participated in this event. Even though we did not win—this time—we are energized about what we saw (the future looks bright), made many great contacts and hope to be back next year.
Stay tuned for more exciting developments!
Over the next weeks vEco will be revamping our logo and site design to improve your interactive experience. We are excited about this evolution and have many stimulating projects in the works for 2012.
Watch this space!
Having successfully advanced through Stage I and Stage II of the Digital Media and Learning Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, the contest organizers have invited two members of the Virtual Ecotourism team to San Francisco to pitch the project in person!
With flowers in our hair, we head to San Francisco for the February 28–29 finals at the California Academy of Science and a chance to win up to $200,000 in project funding for 2012–2013.
The winners will be announced at the Mozilla Science Fair on March 1st, 2012 and their badges will become part of the Mozilla Open Badges Ecosystem. This projects aims to recognize knowledge and skills obtained outside a formal classroom setting using online tools.
You can see our entry here, and two of our proposed badge designs below.
The vEcotourism team is pleased to announce the launch of our YouTube channel, which will hosts recordings made by our vEco tour guides in the field, link to amazing videos of the natural world, showcase brilliant conservation projects, bring awareness to environment and wildlife issues, and feature talks by renowned conservation professionals.
Our first feature video is a talk by Ian Redmond OBE, renowned conservationist, UN Ambassador for the Great Apes, and Chairman of the Ape Alliance, about his incredible experiences working with Dian Fossey and mountain gorillas. Read more
After winning Stage I of the DML Badges Competition, the virtual ecotourism team decided to take destiny into our own hands and entered our own unique badging system in Stage II of the competition.
If we are successful in this stage we will be competing in a live showdown with other winners in San Francisco, USA, with finalists taking home up to $200,000. Read more
Previous posts outlined the Virtual Ecotourism team’s current objectives and strategies, as well as plans for the near future. This final blog post briefly introduces two long-term objectives of the project. Although they are ambitious and may not be realized for some time, they remain extremely important to the vEco vision.
The vEco team is currently focused on Phase I of the project: Tour Development. However, we hope to finish assembling a template showcase tour by February 2012, and intend to begin Beta testing of the project near that time. This blog post outlines three areas of focus and strategic development for the coming months, including the creation of brand new tours worldwide.
Our last post described Phase I of the virtual ecotourism project: the ongoing development of tours and user interface. Although this has a major focus of the past months, the vEco team has also been busy with other projects including the creation of two new blog websites and an encouraging success in an international funding competition.
The overarching goal of the virtual ecotourism project is to connect people to the incredible ecosystems that sustain our planet as well as the diversity of cultures worldwide in order to contribute to the conservation of our planet.
But how do we plan to reach that goal? Over the next week, this blog will be featuring a series of posts that outline the vEco team’s current objectives and strategy, summarize our recent work and focus, and look to the future of the project.
A perfect post for the beginning of a new year! Read more
The team is very proud to announce that the virtual ecotourism project has been chosen, out of over 350 applicants, to advance to Stage Two of the Digital Media and Learning Badges Competition. This means that our content was deemed compelling and original, and capable of evaluating 21st century learning as part of a worldwide badge ecosystem.
This brings us one step closer to sharing the grand prize of $200,000 which we hope to use to develop a badging system for our tours.
