Intensive Conservation Education Skills Training

 

ZOO/SANIZE organized three educator training workshops at our office premises, sponsored by Wildlife Conservation Society.  We invited carefully selected educators zoo personnel, zoo volunteers, school teachers, museum educators, students, NGOs, and individuals in different post from forest departments, colleges, university departments,  These training modules are intended to provide educators with effective and easy-to-use teaching tools featuring a  wildlife theme, which they could apply to any topic about which they need to teach.   The training also provides a source of effective activities and teaching strategies to reach children.  Simple evaluation tools for assessing the efficacy of different techniques are also taught.  Our objective in all these activities is to help educators improve their teaching by using active-learning techniques which produce more effective delivery and improved response from learners.

 

The third Intensive Educator Skills training (IEST) was organized from 18-20 July 2008 and had representation from three states, Karnataka (3), Kerala (3) and Tamil Nadu (12).

 

 

Each training had a different agenda to reflect the needs of the groups invited, as well as to serve ZOO’s own needs.  One of our needs was to test some new material.  We introduced some of it in the 2 workshop and all of it in the third workshop.

 

Though the training theme is almost invariably wildlife teaching, the programme agenda and teaching tools may revolve around a particular species, such as Sloth bear which was the subject for the third batch.  ZOO has developed a teaching guide or manual for teaching about Sloth bears, sponsored by ALERTIS, Netherlands.  The guide includes games, drama, mapping activity, field activities, role play, the work of conservation biologists, indoor and outdoor activities, debate, mock CAMP or PHVA exercises, evaluation tool and other topics. 

 

All activities, whether they are simple games or brain and body-breaking activities, are intended to teach something about the theme such as the biology of bears, how bears influence human culture, how field biologists work to gather data, how data is used to make conservation decision, etc.  Lessons learned by ZOO in testing the draft bear guide using the help of our trainees, will be reflected in a better product, which should be available by the time of Wildlife Week. 

 

 

Click here for the report of the First IEST – June 2007

Click here for the report of the Second IEST – June 2008.