Ecology in Classrooms & Outdoors
A WordPress curriculum site, built alongside an existing Squarespace website, where an Oregon ecology nonprofit shares its lessons with educators anywhere.
To address the disconnect between the classroom and the outdoors, environmental scientists and educators Sarah Woods and Bethany Thomas founded Ecology in Classrooms & Outdoors (ECO) in 2005. They developed hands-on ecology lessons to foster personal connections between students and nature, and to get them learning outdoors at a time when awe and curiosity are abundant. Ever since, ECO has led place-based ecology programs for Oregon students during the school day, in classrooms and outdoors, giving priority to under-resourced schools. Their Aves Compartidas program links Spanish immersion classrooms in Oregon’s Willamette Valley with students in Mexico’s Laja River Basin through the migratory birds their regions share. ECO, a Portland nonprofit, is now working to make their curriculum available to educators anywhere.
Website Design
ECO wanted any teacher to be able to use the ecology lessons their educators bring to Oregon schools, and we built Teach ECO, their curriculum site, on WordPress with a custom theme to make that possible. The site sits alongside ECO’s main Squarespace website, linked to it throughout, and lets them share their free lessons and sell their Place-Based Units side by side. Membership is free for teachers and opens those lessons in full, many of them in Spanish as well, and they can purchase a unit when they want more.
Website Hosting & Maintenance
Our work on ECO’s curriculum site didn’t stop at launch, and we host it for them as well. We make a monthly backup, install the WordPress and plugin updates as they come out, and run 24/7 monitoring on the site, all for the teachers who depend on it as they get ready for class.
03 — The Work
With Teach ECO, teachers can plan their next ecology lesson.
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