Friday, April 7, 2000

Biodiversity Pioneer Turns to CD-ROM to Spread His Message By NINA WILLDORF A bevy of critically acclaimed books, television appearances, and packed lecture halls led Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University's noted biodiversity scholar, to the natural next step: a CD-ROM. If one thing has become clear in his decades of work in the field of conservation biology, it is that overhead projectors just don't suffice anymore. Mr. Wilson's first foray into new media is a CD-ROM, "Conserving Earth's Biodiversity" (Island Press), which was released in January. A program on the CD allows the user to take a virtual journey to Costa Rica, closely inspect maps showing world deforestation rates, and listen to and watch lectures by Mr. Wilson, the scholar Time magazine named in 1996 as one of the 25 most influential Americans. Mr. Wilson worked with Dan L. Perlman, a conservation biologist and former lecturer at Harvard, to create the extensive teaching tool, which can be used on both P.C.'s and Macintosh computers. The CD-ROM is intended for use by undergraduates and advanced high-school students, but Mr. Wilson believes it can be useful for even those working on high-level research. For the exploratory and inquisitive, there are tools like graphs that provide a hands-on application of complex theories like genetic stochasticity, and Internet links that point to Web sites with more information. Mr. Perlman notes that, unlike a book, the CD-ROM's cross-links allow for a variety of learning styles. "Different levels of students can use it deeply or shallowly," he said, by choosing to learn more through Internet links or by just listening to Mr. Wilson's introductions. Much of the content of the CD-ROM came from a yearlong undergraduate seminar that Mr. Perlman taught at Harvard from 1990 to 1999, "Conservation Biology and Biodiversity." The CD-ROM includes eight major sections -- Introduction, Global Biodiversity, The Diversity of Life, Biodiversity Over Time, Threats to Biodiversity, Conservation Practices, Social Issues, and Learning More -- though it does allow for aimless exploration within the program. All of the segments start with video clips of Mr. Wilson providing an overview of the section, and sharp, colorful photographs -- many of which were taken by Mr. Perlman. Many of the sections also incorporate maps and charts to allow for hands-on exploration of everything from the effects of overhunting to environmental degradation. In the final section, Learning More, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Perlman provide links to resources on the World Wide Web, which they will be updating regularly. Mr. Wilson says that the CD-ROM can be interesting and useful to all levels of users. "A lot of the material is new to me," he says. "For me, it's an educational tool. Being able to swing from one map to another and think about the correlates, seeing an instant picture of industry and poverty. You can get a striking picture." Charles C. Savitt, the president of Island Press, says the CD-ROM offers him access to lectures he always wanted to attend while a graduate student at Harvard. Mr. Savitt discovered that Mr. Wilson's lectures were taped, but he was disappointed with the old-media camerawork and overhead projections. So he decided to capture Mr. Wilson's lectures using better technology -- and to distribute them to a larger audience. Island Press received around $430,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation and eight other institutions to produce the CD-ROM, a sum that covered almost all the costs. Now in the middle of its second print run, the CD-ROM has sold more than 15,000 copies. A demonstration version is available on the publisher's Web site, where instructors can participate in a discussion group about how to best incorporate the content into their courses, and others can get a taste of the full flavor the CD-ROM provides. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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