Flashcards of Invasive Species in False Cape and BBNWR

Southeast Virginia is, unfortunately, plagued by several species of invasive plants and animals. While some, like the wild boar, have been nearly eradicated, others like phragmites, need nearly constant management to stay under control.

Phragmites (Phragmites australis) is a beautiful but insanely invasive species of marsh grass. Photo credit: https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/invasive_phragmites_australis_what_is_it_and_why_is_it_a_problem

Full disclosure, I'm not the biggest fan of Google Slides. I find Slides to be a bit cumbersome, and I don't really see an advantage over Powerpoint. I wanted to introduce invasive species in a more user-friendly way, so I used Quizlet to make flashcards. The only downside to using Quizlet was that I would have to post a link to an external site in order for users to access the flashcards. However, I am editing this post days later because I learned how to embed my flashcards, y'all! 

For the presentation below, you can choose "learn" under study mode (lower left corner) to use the cards as a simple educational tool, as I intended them to be. You can click on "start game" and then switch to "learn" once the slides have loaded. However, Quizlet also lets users quiz themselves through multiple choice or matching exercises. I like Quizlet for this reason; it's more versatile and interactive than clicking through a bunch of slides. Plus, if a student or Google user is only interested in a few species as opposed to all of them in the presentation, they can pick and choose which cards they want to flip for info. Win/win, I say! Finally, Quizlet provides thousands of stock photos of plants and animals to add to the presentation, so no photo credits/uploads are needed. 

The downside of Quizlet is that the free version does not allow different font options, bullets, paragraph formatting, or uploads. The free version is good enough for my purposes, but for more complex presentations, users should either opt for a paid version or use another free teaching tool like Google Slides.



I have included a list of the species covered in the flash cards below, along with further reading.

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