sarah

Since the nature and outdoor clubs I teach are for fun and not graded, any of the citizen science projects and inquiry projects we would do would not be graded. Instead, I usually try to incentivize them with a reward for completing the project. For the most part, I plan on leaving it up to them with how well they do. They may be able to take the ideas from nature club and use them in their daily classrooms for science fair projects or other graded projects.

I researched eBird. EBird is a citizen science database, used nationwide to track location, species, and abundance of birds. This database is accessible to anyone, including students and people not participating in the project. There is so much data that students could use it in a multitude of ways to conduct information. They could look at abundance of certain bird species throughout different months of the year, track trends in sightings over multiple years, look at the time of year when certain species start to migrate, they can even compare numbers found between different regions, states, countries, or habitat types.

I chose to collect data using eBird. I didn't experience any challenges because I've used this (and other citizen science portals) frequently in the past. One thing that's worth mentioning is that with any of these projects that rely on data, I always feel like I want to record everything but knowing that when I see very little observations, it's still worth recording because no data is better than wrong  data. If the students participated in this projects then they would learn about bird identification and sounds, how to estimate flock numbers, where the species can be found, which species are solitary and which can be found in groups, which species can be seen in that time of year, and how fun it is to do science.

For me, the most impactful thing about creating a sound map was how the sounds of humans overwhelm the sounds of nature. Even in the woods, the noise of cars driving in the distance, airplanes overhead, and dogs barking can be heard far more common than the songs of birds, the trickling of streams, and the scampering of squirrels. Some fun activities I plan on doing with the children to observe the natural world through the use all the senses are: touch scavenger hunt, color walks, taste of the forest, and sound recordings. With the touch scavenger hunt, I have natural objects hidden in paper bags. The students reach their hands in to feel it. They describe what they feel and go touch things around the forest until they find something that feels the same way. During a color walk, students are given a sheet of colors, and they try to find as many things that match those colors as they can. When we do "A taste of the forest", we go for a foraging walk and learn about the edible things to find in the forest. The students usually get to chew on some wintergreen, dig up some Indian cucumbers, and sample maple syrup. When we do sound recordings, similar to the sound map, students close their eyes. I play recordings on my phone of animals and they listen and try to name the animals.

The first practice mentioned in this article was about making the students feel like they are scientists, not just helpers. I think that this is important in citizen science because students can easily fall into the trap of just repeating the steps instead of thinking critically for themselves and learning the scientific process. One way to achieve this method is by introducing them to a citizen science outlet and as they are gathering information, encourage them to ask questions about some of their observations and do some research to help them answer them. The second practice is to frame the work locally and globally. I think of pollinators as a great topic for this. The research is important because of the global decline of pollinators and we can help collect data by looking at our own community gardens and planting some native plants. The students could participate in planting the gardens and observing which species come to pollinate the flowers, this is an example of framing science both globally and locally. The third practice is harder to prepare for but equally as important as the first two: attend to the unexpected. I think that if students find things that interest them or new curiosities then that is great! Questions always mean that the students are engaging and interested. Allowing them to seek answers on anything allows for more knowledge circulation. I wish to model all of these principles by allowing students to choose what interests them, tying those questions into global and local importance and always assisting them in  seeking new knowledge and answers to curiosities.

As a newly hired secondary educator, I don't have much experience teaching any levels of inquiry. I lead nature clubs at school where students are encouraged to explore, ask questions, and learn about the natural world. Although we don't have structured science lessons, I do teach lessons on citizen science. One of these opportunities is to collect data on bumblebees for the state atlas. I would consider this structured inquiry because the students are given the question- what bumblebees live in this meadow- and the procedure- collect as many bumblebees as you can find, identify them, and record the data. Through this activity they are developing the ability to make critical observations, learning how to identify different species, and how something fun can be used to collect important data. This lesson has so many opportunities to be more open-ended. We could go to the meadows, the students could look around, observe and come up with their own questions about flowers and pollinators. This more open-ended option would allow them to practice the scientific process from beginning to end by asking questions, developing investigation strategies, observing, and summarizing what they found.