A Web Platform for Virtual Interpretive Water Trails
Abstract
The Universidad Veracruzana (UV), through Sustainability Coordination (Cosustenta), promotes awareness about caring environment and water resources by means of interpretive trails. To support this activity, a research group proposed to develop a software platform to manage all the digital resources needed to offer this educational online tool. The goal is to extend environmental education to those that for several reasons cannot participate in an in-situ visit. As a first step, the material of several environmental organizations that offer online educational resources was reviewed to know interfaces, services and resources that they offer: images, video, audio, among others. SCRUM is the agile software development methodology selected, and open-source software such as PostgreSQL, XAMPP, PHP, HTML, CSS, GitHub, Bootstrap, among others, was used. A relational database was designed to manage data from a web server with internet access. This database can host multiple interpretive trails with specific data and multimedia resources. The software uses educational material designed by Cosustenta for the Health Sciences Unit in Xalapa, Veracruz to show how it works; it also uses resources in several formats to enrich user experience at each stop along the trail. The result is a web application called SENDINA, which promotes environmental education by integration of technology and sustainability.