Citizen Science is a form of service learning that gets the average person (not professional scientists) involved in doing real meaningful science that contributes to the greater body of scientific knowledge throughout the world. It's an amazing way for students to learn science and see themselves as parts of a great picture that benefits the community. Accuracy is achieved through the law of averages: the more data collected, the less any aberrations that occur in the data matter. Eventually, the data will even out to what's "true."
Stop the AntThis is a great citizen science/service learning experience my students engage in. They watch videos and do research about the Little Fire Ant (LFA) and how it's spread from South America to tropical islands across the Pacific. They learn its affects on animals and the daily lives of people who live in places infested with the island. Then, armed with information and test kits, they go and collect ant samples. When they bring the samples back, we identify them as best we can and send any positives to the lab for further study. It's a GREAT experience for my students to do real science, and also learn about other cultures. My kids love it, and it's good work for the islands
National Wildlife FoundationThese on-going projects span the entire nation. So, students from any state can get involved and contribute to an ever-increasing body of knowledge. The cool thing about a lot of these is that they don't require any formal training or risk management. One is to examine the stars at night and see how light pollution affects the appearance of constellations. Even third graders could do that.
Space-Specific Citizen ScienceNASA needs our help! Space is huge; exploring and studying it is a monumental task that no one scientist could ever accomplish. Good thing there are about 7 billion people on our planet! If every did this one day, that would be 7 BILLION stars identified, 7 BILLION quadrats analyzed for possible planets, 7 BILLION experiments contributed to. Just imagine how far we'd advance our knowledge of the universe. It'd almost be an .. astronomic leap.. Yuk, Yuk, Yuk.
Mosquitoes: Vampires of Doom and How Citizen Science is Stopping ThemThis is an excellent citizen science experience that my 7th graders are currently involved in. They collect mosquito eggs, rear them, and then identify their species. They're looking for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, because that's the one most linked with zika virus. Then, they report the info online for peer review. It's important, because if we know can identify vectors for disease early enough, we can prevent the disease's spread by eliminating the vectors.
Cloud InstituteThese are pretty neat lessons that take a nice scientific bend. They all end with students making an action plan to resolve an issue, which I think is great. The high school band of lessons can be adapted to middle school (and vice-versa) so you can really push the kids with discussions and deeper analysis.
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Xerces SocietyThe Xerces Society is an excellent resource for citizen science and experiences. It has a number of ongoing projects that you can link into with your class. Some of them are state specific (a lot are in California, or Ohio), but others are national. Either way, the projects are great tools to use as inspiration for your own lessons.
Project NoahThis is an app, and should probably be in my NGSS tab or #TeacherHacks. But, it provides a great way for students to engage with science and participate in a larger community, so it goes here. It's a wonderful app that students can use to identify the species of an organism by posting pictures for consensus review. They can also identify the organism themselves and ask for verification. By listing where they find the organism, they're helping scientists with location research. It's a fun and exciting tool to engage students in citizen science. The app also works on iPhone and Android forms.
Our Project In Hawaii's IntertidalThis is Hawaii-specific, but the protocols could probably be adapted to any location, even terrestrial. The goal is to track the species diversity of algae in Hawaii's intertidal zones. Researchers hypothesize that the biodiversity of Hawaii's coastal waters is being adversely affected by the Earth's changing climate. This study has students from high school down to grade school learn how to identify algae, and then do biologic surveys of a local tide pool (preferably in their ahupua'a, but that's not always possible or feasible) and then report that data to researchers at the University of Hawaii.
I've done this with my students for two years now, and it's been amazing! Going BlueThis a YouTube trailer for a book I use in my class. It's full of great stories about students taking action to effect change in the environment. I especially like that there's a case study from Hawaii :). The book is full of facts, and, according to my students, is a "pretty interesting book." The case studies are spaced throughout the book, always followed up by prompts and suggestions for how students can plan to take action.
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