Earth Week 2014, MapWorks Learning is excited to announce the Global Mangrove Mapathon

WASHINGTON - April 16, 2014 - PRLog -- MapWorks Learning is excited to announce the Global Mangrove Mapathon, which will be held during Earth Week, April 21-25, 2014. The event challenges students, teachers and the public to participate in a worldwide field study to raise awareness and protect mangrove forests!

MapWorks Learning is an education non-profit and was formed to address the inequalities that exist in access to high-quality educational experiences and resources.  We serve as an incubator for ideas, an innovator in equalizing access to technology and an educator of best practice teaching methods.  Based in Washington, DC, MWL believes in equal access to knowledge for all learners, around the globe through the use of open learning innovations.

The Mapathon uses a crowdmapping toolkit called Mapping the Mangroves, an open source project that couples a mobile app and companion website to display user entries.  Anyone with a smartphone or tablet can use Mapping the Mangroves to upload pictures, video or text about different organisms that they see in the mangroves.  The information is displayed on the website thereby creating a database of information on the mangroves.

The Mangrove Action Project, 5 Oceans Environmental Services, Earth Day Network, IPTI Brazil and Flipside development agency have all signed on as partners for the event.  The Qatar Foundation International has signed on to help get the word out.