Commons and specimens
The Green Steps Nature Guide Training consist of 4 online mentoring sessions and 14 assignments to be completed individually. While the assignments focus more on the pedagogical aspects of the training, e.g., explaining how to design educational outdoor activities for kids using the basic theory of the Montessori Method, the online mentoring sessions help the participants in growing their Bioregional Identity and learn more about nature in their surroundings, regardless of where they are located, by using several ARK functionalities.
During the first mentoring call, the future Nature Guide learns about the importance of ecoregions to protect our world and the main species of plants and animals that belong to their ecoregion. The second call, instead, focuses on the concept of commons and enable the participants to become commons mentors of their home territory.
What are commons? While an ecoregion is a large area of the planet unified by the same climate and biodiversity, commons are territories designed on a human scale! everyone should be able to cross his own commons in one day on foot. The importance of those smaller territories is to enable its inhabitants to jointly manage its resources and decide over its development.
On the ARK, everybody can create his own commons or join an existing one!
We advise to use villages, small municipalities or a city district. Once the participants have created their own commons, they will automatically become commons mentors!
But what are the advantages of being a Commons Mentor? Commons Mentors are able to edit and moderate the information about their local territory, plus, they will have the access to review the trees and cultural element, also defined as Points Of Interest (POI), that have been mapped in their commons.
And why is it important to map POI? Because those are the natural and cultural landmarks that make up an ecoregion. Only by mapping and writing about them, others can discover those elements, learn about the ecoregion and, in this way, grow their bioregional identity. They are the basic elements to gamify bioregional learning and an extremely important tool for future Nature Guides.
The new common mentors are invited to map new POI by using the mapping tool available on the ARK App.
Some of the information to be provided when mapping a tree, is then used to calculate the ecosystem services provided by the trees, which are visible on the tree page after its approval!
If you are interested in becoming a Commons Mentor and starting to map POI, you can view the recording of the mentoring session 2 here. Follow us on our next mentoring session to learn how to connect trees in a Quest and create your own educational game in your Commons!