Want to use the Atlas to teach school students about Australian wildlife? This quick tutorial will show you how.
Whether your focus is frogs or ferns, the Atlas of Living Australia is a fantastic teaching resource. Built to be Australia’s primary resource of information about its plants, animals and fungi, the Atlas answers questions about different species, the environments they live in and where they occur.
Perhaps the most interesting way for students to use the Atlas is to type in their school’s address or field trip location and discover what species exist within a kilometre radius. Students can generate information to help them explore the local area, including:
- a checklist of all species in the are
- a satellite or street map with all of the different species sightings that scientists, students and members of the public have uploaded to the Atlas
- a field guide with the names and images of all species located in the area, in pdf format.
Students can also contribute to the species records in the Atlas by uploading their own species observations, either online or from the field using a free mobile app.
Older students can use the Atlas in more sophisticated ways, such as exploring the relationship between a species and its environment, generating a predictive model for a species or discovering how well biodiversity is represented in a reserve.
To learn how to use the Atlas for teaching purposes, please download this tutorial by Lee Belbin: here.