The Cyber Plant Conservation Project (CPCP) - Malaysia

Launched in 2002, The Cyber Plant Conservation Project (CPCP) is an ICT-based environmental project involving approximately 1500 students from 20 non-mainstream urban and rural secondary schools in Kuala Lumpur and Selango. Teams of students will care for rare fruit trees planted in the school, developing a web page to document their involvement in the project. The collaborators, which include schools, the government, and conservation and ICT experts, developed CPCP in order to:

• Create an electronic community of school students, college students, and interested persons in the community committed to the conservation of the environment.
• Conserve and propagate the rare fruit tree species in the country and increase community awareness of their importance.
• Provide the opportunity for secondary school students to acquire training in ICT-based knowledge acquisition, independent project learning, scientific thinking and research skills.
• Preserve and document traditional knowledge on the uses of rare plant genetic resources.

Main Communication Strategies
The 75 students in each school will be organised into a Cyber Club comprising 25 teams of 3 students each. In preparation for the project, students will be provided with both electronic and hard-copy workbooks, comprising both guided (step-by-step) and free-form training modules organised according to the scientific and environmental themes of the project. In addition, 5 volunteer mentors - college students and teachers at the schools - will visit each school on a weekly basis. These mentors will have undergone about a week undergoing training designed to prepare them to act as coaches to the students in the following areas: operation of computers and ICT-related equipment, planting and tree care, and guidance in online and conventional book research.

Each participating school will then be provided with about 10 rare fruit trees to plant on school grounds. The teams will have the responsibility of caring for these trees. Each team will also develop a web page expected to last the lifetime of the tree. In addition to documentation of the progress of each tree, these web pages will reflect the research that students have conducted. Specific content might include information on morphological characterisation, inventory exercises to document similar trees in the community, and facts about tree care and plant propagation. It is expected that approximately 500 websites will be produced. At the end of the project, mentors will lead their teams in a competition for the best web site.

At the end of the one year demonstration period, the teams will be encouraged to exchange their research findings and share their experiences at conferences.