Brian McMurray - Interactive (and) Web Developer

Irons Oaks Environmental Learning Center is a wildlife learning park near Chicago, Illinois. The Iona Group helped Irons Oaks to create a new learning classroom for their facility featuring touch-screen kiosks where students can explore a library of wildlife journals created by other students as well as other wildlife software.

The journal entry and retrieval system is powered by a database running on Irons Oaks internal network and is accessed by students using software written using Adobe Flash. The software allows students to search and explore previous entries that have been entered by students and approved by Irons Oaks administrators.

From the same station, students are able create journal entries to be submitted to the library. Students are sent into the park with digital cameras and digital audio recorders to explore and find wildlife. These devices are then plugged into their kiosks and students can easily build journal entries on what they discovered in the park.

These entries are not immediately available to the journal library, but can be brought up by an instructor to be displayed on a larger display for presentation to the group. Later, instructors log into a web-based management application to review journal entries, make any required edits, and promote the entries to the common journal library.