We have dabbled with citizen science project over the years including terrapin projects with the National Aquarium, DNR projects (yellow perch, horseshoe crab, sunfish, and shad), counting penguins, Project Budburst, collecting macro-invertebrates, and Globe cloud. I have not done any on monarchs (other than tagging) as we do collect, hatch, and tag monarchs. I also want to do more with birds as the students can experience a life long activity.

We have not used any specific citizen science programs in our high school classroom. We had a plan for this spring to engage the students using eBird. We were able to obtain a class set of binoculars in order to do so. I believe the more the students can connect with the direct natural environment they live in is always beneficial. Our school district has urban-like areas that students live in and then completely wooded, secluded areas that students live in. Having them connect with their environment will allow them to care more about the state and wellbeing of their environment. Our plan for this year was to have students make a field guide of their school grounds that can be passed on from class to class each year. Overtime, we thought it would be interesting to see the changes that occur especially since we have new construction happening soon in our district. I think it would be a great addition to the project to find a citizen science program to go with each subgroup (invertebrates, plants/trees, birds, mammals) for the students to pursue.

Unfortunately, I have not used any of the citizen-science projects with my students.  However, I look forward to incorporating some of them to my daily classrooms or to an after school group.  At my school, we have large windows and  we have a beautiful courtyard with a working pond.  I would like to try the Project Feeder Watch, Monarch Larva Monitoring and/or Project BudBurst.  I think these projects will be fun and interesting, and will allow my students to work in pairs to observe, identify and record data.  The best part is getting outside and experience nature!  I also know many of my previous students who will love these activities.  I would love to start an after school science club and have some of my older previous students mentor my younger students.

I have not participated in a citizen science project but plan to in the future. I noticed that the citizen science projects align with student inquiry projects. Two that I would love to incorporate into my course are Celebrate Urban Birds and Project Feeder Watch. Both projects lend themselves to having student engage in observations and identification of species. After submitting our observations I plan for students to come up with their own questions to investigate based off of their observations. They would then work in groups to create a procedure to help them answer the question, analyze their results and share their findings.

I have not participated in a formal citizen science project with my students.  I have encouraged my students to observe their natural surroundings.  My students and I have taken time during class outings to spend time observing and discussing the species that we were seeing around us.  Part of my purpose in doing this was to introduce my students to the idea of stopping to notice what was around them and to begin to appreciate their natural surroundings. As I look at the many different citizen science projects described in this reading, I believe a project like FeederWatch would be best for my students.  I am currently teaching in an urban setting and will take advantage of the fact that birds can be found in most settings.  I hear birds singing each morning as I arrive at school.  Birds are in the communities where my students live.  There might even be an opportunity to install a bird feeder just outside our classroom window for student observations.  Students will not need any special equipment to begin keeping record of the birds they see as they go about their day.  This will be the best way for me to introduce a citizen science project to my students.  Making the project as simple as possible in their day should result in the highest rate of student participation and student enjoyment.

I have never done a citizen-science project.  After reading through the material for this session I am very excited to try something like this with my class next year.  In all honesty I have never heard of any of these types of projects and the idea that my first graders can help scientists is fascinating to me!  We study birds a bit in our two science bundles "Animal Parts and Survival" and "Protecting the Young & Animal Trait Inheritance and Variation."  I would love to incorporate the citizen science project called The Great Backyard Bird Count.  This would be such an awesome experience for students and their families. From February 12th-15th this coming winter (2021) any participant is encouraged to tally the number and kinds of birds that they see during a 15 minute period of time.  You can observe for one of the designated days or all four of them.  February 12th falls on a Friday so this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce this citizen science project and explain how to participate.  Using the Seesaw family communication app,  I could send a video and link to the site to inform families about this awesome opportunity.  With Covid 19 and the uncertainty of what school will look like throughout the 2020-2021 year this is a project that students could do from home and that I would be able to explain through distance learning if needed.

We have used the following: eBird & BumblebeeWatch. I don't have any big advice to give at the moment.

While we haven't yet done a citizen-science project with learners, we would like to incorporate citizen science to evaluate & monitor pockets of wildlife living in the more urban areas of our city so that we may use that information to tailor future outreach programs relaying the importance of native wildlife and how to co-exist. This would be more of a community project, rather than one with just students/children, and would be longitudinal in nature, observational.

I have not yet used any citizen-science projects with my learners. I am interested in Project Budburst and Project Feederwatch. We have unused raised beds at our school, and I am in really interested in incorporating more gardening into our science activities. I think Project Budburst would be a great way for students to develop their observation skills in a meaningful way. I am also thinking about ways to incorporate citizen science projects into distance learning, and I think Project Feederwatch might be a fun way for my students to do this.

I have done a few citizen-science projects with my outdoor camp learners, including; MonarchWatch, FrogWatch Ontario, TurtleWatch Ontario, and MilkweedWatch (most of these are Canadian as I live in Canada). What I love about these projects is that it makes children feel that they are contributing to conservation science in addition to having them engage more in the environment around them. My advice for doing citizen-science is to ask your learners what they are interested in learning about, and find citizen-science projects based on those topics. This will engage the learners more actively, and they will likely be more excited to participate if it is based on their topics of interest. It is also an easy way to engage children who don't think they are interested/care about science because they actually get to participate and see how accessible it can be to them as well.

I have participated in  both Nature's Notebook and The Great Backyard Bird Count with students.  We have a Nature's Notebook phenology trail at the arboretum where I work. I find the project really useful and have tried to share the importance of citizen science with the students I have lead thru the trail.  One issue I had with this project was the lack of WiFi throughout our grounds. It has been about 5 years since I lead a middle school home school class thru the trail. I ended up printing off lots of important ID info from the website on each specimen.  We tried to collect the data to submit later but really it would have been much better to use a smart phone and do in real time (as I have done on my own).  Now, in 2020, this may be a very fun and engaging citizen science class- it would be much easier to get my hands on several tablets/smartphones! Unfortunately, I only see these students once, but I feel they can be given the exposure and tools to carry on with their observations and data submissions as a family whenever they visit our grounds- or set up an observation in their own yard!   Spark the interest! After an initial common bird ID introduction, lessons using e-bird and the GBBC have been loads of fun!  I would recommend this citizen science project to all. My students and I have watched feeders and compiled data.  We have not, for lack of time, elaborated on the projects into true inquiry: asking questions, experimenting and all the rich discussion that follows. I have shared the websites with these groups of students so they may continue on with the projects but would like to find a way to go deeper within the 90 minutes class.  Maybe a series of programs/classes on consecutive weeks/Saturdays with home school students is needed?  Try to incorporate more of these projects in our 1 week summer day camps? Again, not a school year worth of inquiry but a bit more than I am able with the groups coming to my location on a sporadic basis.

I have not yet done a citizen science project hence my desire to take this course and learn more! I think a citizen science project would work great as an after-school program or with boy and girl scouts or other youth organizations. I've never done a citizen science project in my classroom mainly due to time constraints. However, after looking through the citizen science projects above, the time commitments seem reasonable so I'm going to do one! I especially like the Monarch larva and BudBurst projects!

We have a grant funded pollinator project, and I would love to use one of the invertebrate projects like Great Sunflower Project or Monarch Larvae Monitoring Project. There is a garden space at the elementary school I visit that would be perfect for these projects. I visit every few weeks for the entire school year, so these projects would fit well with my curriculum

I love the Citizen Spotlight on Mammals! Recently at my school, we installed a trail cam in our wooded area to study what animals were is this habitat. So far, we discovered numerous rabbit, squirrel, opossum, various birds and even a stray cat! Up until now, I've been the one checking the cam and then reporting to students what we "caught on camera". However, after reading these ideas I think this would be the perfect opportunity to get my students further invovled. Students could make predictions on what animals they think live in this habitiat, and even help me reqularly check the cam and record data based on what we "caught on camera". We could then further varify our findings by searching for signs/evidence of the animals such as scat, tracks or leftover food. I can't wait to get the students more invovled!