Group

Conservation Tech Training and Education / Feed

There are educators everywhere working to teach and train the next generation of sustainability minded students. Whether in formal settings (K-12, undergraduate, graduate) settings or informally as science communication now it is more important than ever to work towards advancing Conservation Tech education. By working on interdisciplinary teams we can help develop teaching and training tools to help expand the field of Conservation Technology creation.

article

How to get more done in the little time you have. Delegate. 5 hacks how to do it. 

To keep creating this positive impact, you must learn to delegate tasks to others. Otherwise, you will crack or burn out. Here are 5 hacks for how to do it. 

2 0
Great post, Oliver!From my years of experience leading very large teams with ~$2B global revenue: when you are working with highly talented, creative, individuals, delegate the...
100% @Drue_Freeman couldn't agree more. In the end it is about execution and the entire team working towards the same goal. Doesn't matter exactly if step by steps were followed....
See full post
discussion

ISO Speakers for Emerging Technologies class.

Hi Everyone, Apologies for posting across multiple groups.  I'm teaching a new course @ Clark University next semester on emerging technologies for conservation. The course...

2 0

Definitely interested! I'm in the ecoacoustics/acoustic monitoring space, working at Rainforest Connection and Arbimon.

See full post
discussion

Looking to contribute

Hi everybody 👋🏽,I'm a UX designer, and I design interfaces and improve user experiences/flows. I would love to contribute to conservation tech / climate tech, especially saving...

3
See full post
article

MOOC TECH 

The MOOC TECH will introduce the context of technologies applied to conservation, existing techniques, prerequisites for their implementation, their scientific and / or technical basis, their opportunities and...

0
See full post
discussion

Moveapps: EMAC23 Coding Challenge

Motivated by having been named a Conservation Tech Award grantee in 2022, we are launching the EMAC23 coding challenge to Equip MoveApps for Conservation.Pick one of five use...

4 0

Super initiative! I hope you get a lot of entries to this coding challenge!

See full post
discussion

Welcome to the Conservation Tech Training and Education Group!

Hello and welcome to our group!In this group, we’ll be discussing all things conservation tech education. That may seem broad and the intent of it is! Conservation tech ranges...

12 7

Hi everyone! 

Popping in here to drop in the recording of the chat we had with Suzanne and Andrew about this group at our recent Variety Hour call. If you're new to the group it might be a useful orientation. 

Steph

Hi Folks, 

I'm Liz Ferguson from Ocean Science Analytics and just noticing this thread so reaching out to express interest! Thanks for posting that overview Stephanie. 

My company is an ocean science research consulting and online technical training company. We provide hands-on training for software, thus far related to passive acoustic monitoring and R, but have a Marine spatial analysis course coming out using QGIS in 2023. I also teach at a local college, and some analytical courses. Really interested in the group so happy you started it Suz and Andrew!

 

 

Thank you liz! @sstathat and I are really excited about the group as well. I can imagine there are a lot of challenges with training folks to use the software. Are these software/trainings. open source and/or available online? 

See full post
discussion

What new best-practice guides do you need? 

Hi everyone, Two best practice guides have been added to the library this week, and i'm hearing some whispers of some others in development. I'm collating them into this...

8 1

This guide for ecoacoustics looks good. I  havent read it yet though! 

What about thermal cameras and drones with thermal cameras for monitoring of mammals?

See full post
article

Download Now: A Best Practice Guide to Satellite Technologies for Tracking Wildlife

Zoological Society of London
The Zoological Society of London, with the support of WILDLABS and the UK Space Agency, are proud to publish this new guide to satellite technologies for tracking wildlife.

2 3
Very nice! Looking forward to checking it out!
We had this comment come in to our team from @Redfoxmeek so I'm passing along the helpful resource: Hi Folks- Thanks for the manual, can I also draw your attention to...
See full post
discussion

Suggestions for user research/co-design methodologies

Hi everyone, I'm wondering if anyone on here has an experience with user research or user testing for conservation technology 'products'? Please get in touch, I'd love to discuss...

13 1

Hi,

I'm the UX researcher at Rainforest Connection (RFCx). I use research methods such as interviews, usability testing, and card sorting to understand scientists' pain points and needs while using the bioacoustic monitoring platform, Arbimon. 

In terms of tools, I use Figjam for brainstorming and mapping, Notion for a research repository, Zoom for interviews, and Figma for prototyping. I'm exploring how to use ChatGPT to speed up my process too! I use it to draft recruitment emails, summarize transcripts etc. I try to use tools that are either low-cost or that RFCx already has subscriptions of. 

Since I'm a UX team of one, I also partner with University student groups/practicum courses to let UX students take on some of our projects. 

Feel free to reach out; I'm always happy to chat.

 

 

Hi @Sicily_Fiennes 

Apologies for the very late response to this thread, are you still looking for advice on user research and co-creation methodologies? I see there is a lot of support here on tools already ;-)

I would recommend running some sessions with low fidelity prototypes as early as possible, definitely before investing in any development! You can do this with a variety of tools, but paper prototypes can also be great if you are trying to compare very different concepts. You can use sketches to run more of a co-creation session, so that you encourage your users to define the data insights that they need explicitly and explore together different ways of visualizing & interacting with the information.

I normally do 1-1 interviews to define needs and identify potential barriers, before prototyping. But, you might be further ahead in the design process by now. 

If you still need some advice on defining the key use cases or the data visualization with users, I would be happy to offer a quick chat over zoom on how to go about it.

I am an independent service designer / user researcher with 14 years of experience in the tech industry, based in Europe :-)

Hope this helps!

Yanna 

Hi @Sicily_Fiennes,

Over the past several years, I have explored how to design engaging and useful tools for the exploration of audio recording to locate calls of a particular bird species (i.e. Eastern bristlebirds). I worked to understand the practices of a species recovery team, as well as their experiences trialling audio recorders and analysis. Additionally, I explored knowledge of birders and broader audiences, and how this relates to them making sense of audio recordings and broader nature media (e.g. distribution maps and photographs of birds). My methods to understand these included semistructured interviews, artifact exploration (very low fidelity prototyping), and ethnographically inspired participant-observer fieldwork. I also took some inspiration from design research approaches such as contextual inquiry, cultural/technical probes, and more. My background prior to being a design researcher was in ecology, conservation, and environmental education, so I drew from that expertise to understand a little-known bird species and the role of technology in supporting people in becoming familiar with it. Most of my work was positioned within the field of Interaction Design, publishing via Human-Computer Interaction, Designing Interactive Systems, and Computer Supported Cooperative Work outlets (i.e. rather than UX/UI). If interested in knowing more, perhaps have a look at papers I was the first author on that are listed here, and a few videos here. My research highlights the importance of understanding the situation, knowledge, experiences, and needs of different groups of people to design enticing and useful technologies that foster learning, cooperation, and integration into existing practices. In my experience, people are sometimes compelled to be more open and creative when not interacting with technologies that can be perceived as expensive and polished products. 

See full post
article

Gender Equality in Conservation

Meet the women and men supporting gender equality in conservation #tech. Here is a panel discussion the Women in Conservation Tech (WiCT) led in November 2022, during the EarthRanger User Conference (ERUC). Opening up...

5
See full post
discussion

Solar panels in the tropics

We are deploying automated systems in the topics and hope to use solar panels, but this closed canopy in most places I'm seeing this as a challenge.Past the obvious: 'find a...

4 0

Hi Tom,

I'm with Akiba, you have to test.  A collaborator has deployed solar-augmented kit in secondary jungle and some of them got enough light, and others didn't, so it can work.  The open circuit voltage of solar panels doesn't change a whole lot in dim light, but the current drops drastically.  So you would choose an oversize panel of the same voltage (or a bit higher).

Thanks

I've been intrigued by this topic. Thinking about ways you could use drones or some kind of launcher to deploy panels above the canopy. Sadly I live in the great white north so I have no way of testing any concepts. Maybe even some kind of solar balloon that could float above the canopy. Interesting design problem.

Hey Tom,
Since the output is dependent on a couple of factors such as the solar irradiance of the place, shading from the canopy, the type of solar panels (mono, poly or amorphous) and orientation of the panels, etc, I'd suggest you use a software to simulate the different parameters to get an almost accurate estimation of the output. You can try PVsyst- it has a free month trial (I haven't used it before but I hear it's great) or any other PV software :)

See full post
event

AI for Forest Elephants Challenge

FruitPunch AI is hosting the AI for Forest Elephants Challenge. Together with 50+ AI enthusiasts and experts from all over the globe, we will apply AI to detect gunshots and elephant rumbles on sound monitoring...

1
See full post
Link

Firetail Fellowships

I'm a software engineer/data scientist at Schäuffelhut Berger. We're developing Firetail a software for GPS and acceleration visualization and behavioral annotation.

We have just launched our Firetail Fellowship Program which may be a great way to get access to a full Firetail license for your student project. Let me know if you have questions or comments on this!

4