Outreach Interactive Webinars

Understanding biodiversity around us provides insights into ecosystem services that provide us clean air, water, and food. Birds play a crucial role in biodiversity and are invaluable as good indicators of ecosystem health. Watching and experiencing natural elements, mainly birds, are known to help people in relieving stress and increase creativity & social connections. Educational institutions across our state are putting in tremendous efforts to engage their students with nature. Despite these efforts, we are all witnessing an increasing gap between children and nature, due to various factors.

Under the current COVID restrictions, to strengthen the connection with nature in children and teenagers, we are offering free dedicated interactive webinars/online meets for schools and colleges in Andhra Pradesh on the following themes

• Birds around us and Birdwatching
• Bird Behaviour
• Birds and Ecosystem Services
• Birds, insects and plants recording and monitoring using citizen science tools like eBird and iNaturalist
  

We hope to have graduated sessions with increasing levels of engagement. We will start with initial exposure and an introductory talk, we will then encourage students to make their own observations from the comfort of their home and its surroundings using their (or their parents) phone. Later, in follow-up sessions, we will teach students to curate their own data and create projects for each school. Eventually, inter-school and similar assessments can be made.
With our interactive sessions, children will get introduced and actively encouraged to observe and record bird diversity around them. This will rejuvenate their minds for more substantial academic benefits. 
If you are interested in our free online sessions for children, please contact our Citizen Science Coordinator at rajabandi@iisertirupati.ac.in.