Ecolog, For those of you who followed the thread, I had asked ECOLOG a few weeks ago if any ecologist working outside the U.S. would be willing to talk with a class of mine via Skype so that my students could see an exotic habitat and learn lessons in ecology that are not reachable here in Idaho. The person who volunteered to do this is based in Central America (if I give you his name maybe he gets a flood of other interested emails?) and was teaching a class in tropical ecology to a group of U.S. students based at a field station. The first lesson was to take a laptop behind the field station to show leaf cutter ants and explain the ant-fungus symbiosis. After this, pairs of students gave presentations on plant-animal interactions (figs and wasps, leaf miners, butterflies and chemical defenses in plants). What we had was a class of college students abroad presenting a live lecture to a group of college students in the U.S.
For the second part of class my students interviewed a conservationist in Honduras about the difficulties of protecting natural resources in a developing country. All in all it was by far the best class I ever "taught." I mention this because I think that with the advances in technology and improvements in infrastructure in foreign countries, we have a huge potential as an ecological society to foster more cross-cultural and cross-environmental education, and we can do this all around the world while remaining in class. Many thanks to the interested persons who offered to help with this class, but for various reasons (some my errors) were not able to participate in the end. David Anderson -- *David L. Anderson**, Ph.D.* *Lecturer, Department of Biological Sciences* Boise State University 1910 University Drive Boise, ID 83725 208-426-3216 [email protected]
