How do you bring a small forest in the middle of a city to students around the world? Two biology professors at the University of Guelph have created a Digital Forest for just such a purpose.
How do you bring a small forest in the middle of a city to students around the world? Two biology professors at the University of Guelph have created a Digital Forest for just such a purpose.
Profs. Shoshanah Jacobs and Alex Smith have long used GigaPan technology as a teaching tool in their popular Discovering Biodiversity (BIOL*1070) course. For the course, which is the largest in the Department of Integrative Biology, students study an ecologically diverse forest on the University campus called the Dairy Bush.
In response to COVID-19 restrictions, the pair had to change the way they deliver the course. But the pandemic has also motivated them to expand the tool to open the Dairy Bush to a more widespread community of learners.
Smith was an early adopter of the sophisticated panoramic photography technology, which was introduced in 2008 as part of a NASA mission. It was originally made to capture high-definition panoramas on Mars but now has an array of terrestrial applications where gigapixel images are needed.
Continue reading at University of Guelph.
Image via University of Guelph.
