This site is a gateway to projects involving public participants in real-world research, with hopes of fostering connections for sharing ideas and resources.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Case Study, Diagram/Illustration, Game, Interactive, Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study
Students learn that ordinary citizens, including students like themselves, can make meaningful contributions to science through the concept of "citizen science." First, students learn some examples of ongoing citizen science projects that are common around the world, such as medical research, medication testing and donating idle computer time to perform scientific calculations. Then they explore Zooniverse, an interactive website that shows how research in areas from marine biology to astronomy leverage the power of the Internet to use the assistance of non-scientists to classify large amounts of data that is unclassifiable by machines for various reasons. To conclude, student groups act as engineering teams to brainstorm projects ideas for their own town that could benefit from community help, then design conceptual interactive websites that could organize and support the projects.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This animation describes how citizen observations can document the impact of climate change on plants and animals. It introduces the topic of phenology and data collection, the impact of climate change on phenology, and how individuals can become citizen scientists.
Material Type: Simulation
This article discusses Project FeederWatch, a real-time citizen science project, and how elementary teachers can use this bird data to integrate math lessons and concepts.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Help scientists recover worldwide weather observations made by Royal Navy ships around the time of World War I. These transcriptions will contribute to climate model projections and improve a database of weather extremes. Historians will use your work to track past ship movements and the stories of the people on board.
Material Type: Interactive
Developing environmentally literate citizens is the primary goal of environmental science. One of the four components of environmental literacy is "connecting to nature". Culture plays a key role in the way individuals connect to their environment. Understanding culture also supports the development of a culturally responsive classroom and helps students develop an understanding of environmental justice, another key concept of environmental science. This lesson helps students explore their own culture and compare and contrast it with other cultures.
Material Type: Interactive, Learning Task, Lesson Plan
This article provides an overview of scientific inquiry and how citizen science programs run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology provide opportunities for inquiry about birds.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
In this project, students will assume the role of citizen scientistshelping researchers answer questions about how dandelions acquire beneficial symbiotic microbes from different soil types. Students will collect and transplant dandelions, conduct experiments on dandelion growth and microbe growth, and then submit data to scientists at the Genomics and Microbiology Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The researchers will use these data to supplement DNA and RNA sequencing efforts. Students will receive results from the genetic analyses from a limited set of classrooms whose dandelions had previously been sequenced. By maintaining a connection with researchers, students will have an active, hands-on role in current science. Besides aiding scientists with research, students will also create their own inquiries.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Journey North engages students in a global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change. K-12 students become involved in citizen science and share their own field observations with classmates across North America. They track the coming of the seasons through the migration patterns of monarch butterflies, robins, hummingbirds, whooping cranes, gray whales, bald eagles— and other birds and mammals; the budding of plants; changing sunlight; and other natural events. Find migration maps, pictures, standards-based lesson plans, activities and information to help students make local observations and fit them into a global context.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
The goals of the International OER Exchange Pilot project are to: facilitate the development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) by teachers and students globally, track the development and use of the science learning materials and data collection, especially around climate change study, created in the project through OER Commons, and highlight the process and results through workshops and conference presentations.The broader purpose of the project is to support the international exchange of information and understanding through freely available resources among teachers and students, especially in the area of environmental science and climate change investigation.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Homework/Assignment, Lesson Plan, Simulation, Teaching/Learning Strategy
Project Budburst is a national network of people monitoring plants as the seasons change. Data is collected in a consistent manner across the country so that scientists can learn more about the responsiveness of plant species to changes in climate locally, regionally, and nationally. The website includes extensive educational resources for implementing the project within various classroom and informal settings.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
WhatBird is a step-by-step search engine for identifying bird species. Can be used in conjunction with lessons on dichotomous keys and other classification systems. The site also demonstrates uses of "citizen science" data collections via smartphones, videos, forum posts, etc.
Material Type: Reference Material
