BITC / BBII - 02 Intro to BITC
0 (0 Likes / 0 Dislikes)
tell you a little bit about the overall program we call it the biodiversity informatics training curriculum.
and the thinking behind this whole project is that biodiversity informatics is a new field
now there have been people doing parts of this field for a long long time
back to Linnaeus perhaps
but doing this as a formal field within the realm of informatics which is actually new
as a consequence of that there are really no established comprehensive programs
for the time being there's no place example to go and do a PhD in biodiversity informatics
now that may change very soon right here in southern Africa with a program being developed at the University of Western Cape
but really it's not like insect systematics where you might go to Cornell university
it's not like most universities where you could get a degree in statistics
this is a field that really doesn't have that established program
still worse is that there aren't many training resources
there aren't text books for example
there aren't references or established protocols in large part obviously exceptions
but really there aren't these established ways of doing business
and at the same time this is a field that is growing massively
the investment you can see here at Zanbi you can see at countries around the world and concede international efforts
very basically there's a lot of interest and a lot of investment in this field
and yet we are without these established protocols, best practices, wisdom of experience
so that's exactly what goes behind this program
the other thing that goes behind thids program is my own interests
this program is eating up an immense amount of my time
for the past and next several years
but my intersets are global
that's where my students have come from
I've been involved in teaching short courses around the world for a number of years
and I got this interest but I was so frustrated with the model
the model was five ten years ago get some experts together and get some smart people who want to learn the techniques from the experts
get them all together in a room ,sit for a week and work together
what are the problems? the problems are it's only 5, 10, 15, 20 participants
and the other problem is that your experts only have certain ability to go to a place
so you really have very limited diffusion
and that was very frustrating to me
so over the past 5, 10 years with a couple of colleagues I've been exploring how we can use technology to solve some of those problems
in person interaction, training, learning, teaching is always best
but wehave very simple technologies at our disposal now.
that can change this picture a bit
so one of the very simplest is youtube
which is to say we have a quite efficient means of sharing digital video
world wide, essentially every internet cafe in the world gets you some degree of access to youtube
and it's a very effective way of communicating at least the lecture part if not the practical part
of training courses
we have explored another interesting solution which is language
my language capacities are rather poorly adapted for Africa
I speak English pretty much OK. I speak Spanish rather fluently and Portuguese rather less more fluently
and a little bit of Malay
so doesn't do me much good in French speaking Africa
so in the sense of a partial solution what we've begun doing is transcribing all of the videos
and then there is a platform on the web what's called the dotsub which allows crowd sourcing of subtitling
so there is a group of people in Egypt when we put out a video subtitle in English they translate it into Arabic
and we have done tests where we can take an hour long lecture put out the English transcription
and within a week it is translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Chinese
so these are some really interesting technological boosts
this provides a lot of content. it makes it available globally
in theory it's at relatively low expense for the benefit
I repeat what I had said on a previous slide which is in my view there is really no substitute for in person work
I would go one more step further that there is no substitute for full doctoral study
so that's my real goal, but this is a way of getting people around the world in contact with the experts
and doing that on a rather broader scale
it doesn't get everything done. but it gets several steps taken
in person training courses, digital videos of everything, gets published to youtube, gets transcribed
English subtitles, translated and then we provide XXXXXXXX information, for example the literarture circulated to you all by email
links to that literature will be provided within the youtube meta data
so in theory the idea is that people around the world will have access to the same content that we will have here
funding for this comes from the JRS biodiversity foundation
they have as their mission to support research and activity in biodiversity informatics
I submitted a proposal to JRS in January 2012
it was funded in June 2012 when I was in XXXXXXXX with XXXXXXXX's group
it was terrible as I had been thinking like I was just going to do research
while I was there and all of a sudden I had to switch gears and get this program in the works
we are envisioning 9 sets of courses on diverse topics, I'll show you those in a moment
and one thing I am going to emphasize is that this is absolutely XXXXXX funding
it's generous funding from JRS, but for the amount of things that we are trying to do it's barebones
so I would have liked to bring in more people and more experts
and more time, but the budget simply doesn't allow it.
so we are doing the very best with a generous grant but we are trying to do a little too much
the topics we were hoping to cover in these several years are a bunch of introductory topics
essentially what is this field
how do we publish scientific papers, how do we write proposals
things like that
major challeneges besides these are how do we capture biodiversity data that are not currently digital
how do we clean and publish biodiversity data that those were the subjects of a week of interaction in Nairobi the February of this year
then we start into essentially how do we use this data and one use to which this data had been put is
attempting to model ecological niches of species
that also was a course that was done in Nairobi in february
next week we'll be talking about a bunch of other analysis to which biodiversity data can be put
this course as you is about building the institutions
at some point we are hoping to do a course on optimal design and implementation of biodiversity inventory efforts
and developing biodiversity diagnostics at a regional or national scale
and implementing biodiversity conservation efforts
you can see it's a huge spectrum of activity
and it relies on the participation of a bunch of experts because this is a spectrum that is far too diverse for 1 or few people
to speak to authoritatively
so we are right here in this progression
and coming up we are hoping to have courses in probably Ghana, Cairo in 2014
those will be announced on as many venues as we can find
but the easiest way to keep track of these announcements is via the facebook group
I'll show you the link to that in a moment
where is this really going? eventually I like to see it extend across organisimal biology
I am going to challenge my colleagues at the University of Kansas this fall
to say "how about if we take our entire graduate curriculum, make it digital and make it online
so that the professors can focus on getting deeper and deeper rather than giving the same lecture that they've given for the past 10 years