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Digital Storytelling with Plants

Young people experience the Botanical Garden: we want to convey exciting plant knowledge through innovative course formats and digital technologies.

Stories and memories of plants travel with us and are shaped by culture and society—in other words, our origins. With this project, we want to document some of these stories using multimedia.

Within the project, we want to get teenagers and young adults more interested in plants. Workshops will combine creative and digital design elements and teach skills in multimedia (= digital storytelling). Young people are invited to join us in producing “digital plant stories” and sharing them on social media. The traditional concept of botanical gardens is thus expanded through multimedia.

To the project overview in the SNSF Dataportal: Link
Duration: 01.06.2023 - 30.11.2025

Would one of the courses below be suitable for your school class? Then please contact the project coordinatorYvonne Steinbach  (agoraworkshop@systbot.uzh.ch / yvonne.möller-steinbach@uzh.ch ) for further information.

DSWP course offer

  • Experience the Bot.Garten in Foxtrail for Instagram

    Experience your plant story in a Foxtrail and create a digital story for Instagram with your avatar! A combination of plant knowledge, plant experience (embodiment), and media technology.
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  • program a Pocketcode game and shoot a film for Instagram

    Program your plant to come to life (with the Poketcode app). A combination of plant knowledge, programming, and creating a mini-film for Instagram.
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  • Artistically shooting a bee film for Instagram

    Film your plant-insect story! A combination of plant knowledge, creativity, art, and the creation of a hand-animated film, captured for Instagram.
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  • Learn about AI and make a tree film

    Experience how artificial intelligence learns and sees! A combination of plant identification, artificial intelligence, and shooting a film for Instagram.
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  • Diving into the microcosm for Instagram (coming soon)

    Curious to see what a leaf looks like up close and what that has to do with journalism? A combination of plant knowledge, research, communication, and filmmaking.
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  • Diving into the macrocosm for Instagram (coming soon)

    Curious about how plants communicate with each other and what that has to do with drones? A combination of plant knowledge, field research, the latest technology, and a film shoot.
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Project News

  • Our new publication about „Nature-based Constructionism“

    In the Design workshop, we combine constructivist learning with environmental education and explore how natural environments can promote digital learning.
    read more More about read more

Additional Information

Projektverantwortliche

PD Dr. Caroline Weckerle
Institute of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany and Botanical Garden Management, University of Zurich, Switzerland

PD Dr. Célia Baroux,
Institute for Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Prof. Dr. Meredith Schuman,
Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Dr. Yvonne Volkart,
University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland

Projectpartners

Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center 
Manuela Dahinden, CreativeLabZ, Switzerland

Prof. Dr. Bernadette Spieler, Zurich University of Teacher Education, Zürich, Switzerland

Project aim

We evaluate how the combination of science communication and digital media can be used to change our perception of plants.
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Instagram Videos

Take a look at the small works of art created by participants in our DSWP project courses.

to the videos

Quicklinks and available languages

Subpages of Digital Storytelling with Plants