Bringing a great voice to new audiences
UB, Jane Goodall Institute launch international online environmental-education project

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

The university has launched a major, online, environmental-education project with the Jane Goodall Institute and its founder, primatologist Jane Goodall.

The project, "Taking Gombe to the World Through Technology," is a joint venture of Verizon Foundation (formerly Bell Atlantic Corporation), Nortel Networks, the Jane Goodall Institute and UB's Center for Applied Technologies in Education (CATE), which will provide expertise in the application of educational technologies.

The project was developed in connection with the 40th anniversary of Goodall's internationally regarded primate research project in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park.

Goodall was at UB Aug. 11 to accept $75,000 from the Verizon Foundation, Nortel Networks and the university to fund the first phase of the project.

Donald Jacobs, director of CATE, calls the project "a unique opportunity to bring one of the great voices of our times to new audiences of learners through advanced technologies. We are thrilled to be working with Dr. Goodall and we're anxious to expand her reach to students across New York State using our expertise in educational technologies."

Added Maureen Rasp-Glose, community-affairs director for Verizon: "This is a wonderful way to use technology to communicate to our global customers the value of respecting life and our planet."

Jacobs explains that the project will use high-speed digital-communication technologies to expand Goodall's mission of environmental and humanitarian awareness and action through community service.

The first phase of the project will link Internet-based content documenting Goodall's 40 years of work in Africa with "Roots and Shoots," her well-established international educational initiative for K-university students.

"Roots and Shoots" began nine years ago with one group of students in East Africa and today involves more than 1,800 registered student groups in 58 nations. The program fosters student development of constructive, locally based environmental projects that help them to understand how individual behavior affects their local communities and the environment as a whole.

The larger mission of "Roots and Shoots," says Jacobs, is to foster respect and compassion for all living things. It promotes understanding of different cultures and their beliefs, he says, and has inspired many thousands of individuals to make the world a better place for animals, the natural environment and the human community.

The second phase of the "Taking Gombe to the World" project will be launched in October in Germany at the second international Youth Summit of Roots and Shoots projects. At that time, Christine Chelus, manager of technology applications development for CATE, will provide summit participants with on-site training in the use of digital storytelling and Web-based tools-tools they can share with their individual "Roots and Shoots" groups at home.

Using these tools, the students' fieldwork will serve as the foundation for an ongoing dialogue that will allow communities of learners throughout the world to share their experiences using the Internet as a primary medium of communication.

The third and final aspect of the project will involve the establishment of high-speed videoconferencing links in Africa, the United States and Germany.

Among its other outcomes, the links will allow students across New York State to interact directly with "Roots and Shoots" groups across the globe. New "Roots and Shoots" groups will be established in New York, Jacobs says, and CATE will work with Western New York schools to involve them in the project.

Jacobs says funding for the second and third phases of the project will be secured from a variety of corporate, public and private sources.