Featured L4C Participant:Gita Mathur

I am a Botanist & Plants are my 'Guiding Force'. I think To Grow and keep Growing to give more to others is the Philosophy of a Tree. WikiEducator is my place to impliment this :-) "Getting together is beginning. Staying together is progress. Working together is success." - Rig-Veda. WikiEducator to me is not just a website, it is a means of sharing my rich experiences as a teacher with the global community of teachers and students.- Getting them together through L4C workshops, encouraging interactions and developing Open Educational Resources.

I am Dr. Gita Mathur, Associate Professor of Botany at Gargi College, University of Delhi, India. I have been a Botany teacher for more than 25 years. I am a trained Botanist, with a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Delhi, India, but over time my interests have diversified to issues related to the environment, science education and innovations in teaching methodologies. I teach a full paper on Plant Ecology and Environmental Management. Plant Biodiversity is another major area I teach. I strongly believe in free access to educational content and in collaborative learning not only among peers but also between a student and a teacher. I am an Ubuntu GNu/Linux user as I am strongly committed to the 'Free & Open' culture. Besides my academic responsibilities, I spend a lot of time working on innovations in teaching Botany including designing experiments which can be done with minimum facilities.

I am very fond of photography, especially close-ups of plants and flowers. I like colours and understand their role in the production of visuals for teaching. The importance of good photographs, diagrams and images in teaching is what I work towards. For years I have been using overhead projection (OHP) transparencies and 35 mm photo-slides to support teaching in my subject. Then digital photographs & slideshow presentations replaced them. Now with WikiEducator, I am supporting my classroom teaching with collaborative content development. I used to email study materials and useful links to my students.

WikiEducator has given a new perspective to my mode of interactive teaching. Now I have a two-way joint/collaborative approach. I have started special sections related to Bryophytes (moss-like plants), Pteridophytes (fern-like plants) and also a glossary of technical terms in Botany on my user page.

I wanted to share this with my colleagues in the college so I organised a face-to-face workshop for them. More than thirty faculty of Gargi College have become WikiEducators. A have started a multi-disciplinary academic advancement hub on my user page. I use this to link to the contributions of all the Gargi faculty. I have also jointly facilitated two online Learning4Content workshops to encourage my students and more faculty members to learn wiki skills, hoping they will collaborate with me on my Botany pages.

Within a month of starting on wikiEducator I was nominated to the Interim Advisory Board of the India-Chapter of WikiEducator. I was the first Indian to get a User Page Expo (UPE) award for my user page and now I have reached the WikiArtisan certification too. At present I am the featured WikiEducator on the India Page. I have a global group of very close WikiFriends. I am an active WikiNeighbour and WikiAmbassador too.

WikiEducator inspires me to think of new ways of using technology for education. For making it more interesting to learners, use of colours and images for visual impact are my favourites. Hence, I have also been contributing to tutorials for adding colours and images on WikiEducator. My landmark dates as WikiEducator are listed here.

I am very happy to be a part of this committed and dedicated community of Teachers and Educators.