Citizen Science Workshop: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Workshop participants engaging in a hands on activity creating home-made Hydrometers that demonstrates the STEM opportunites in Citizen Science. Photo Credit: NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the first session of the Citizen Science Workshop Series: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, at the NOAA Environmental Science Training Center. For those of you unfamiliar with the “up and coming” field of Citizen Science, it is the practice of engaging non-professional scientist in the scientific process. The astute reader would have noticed my strategic use of quotation marks over the words up and coming. This is because although citizen science is new in the sense of its use in modern science, using layman to gather data for professional scientist, back in the day of some of the most famous scientist including Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Darwin, science was conducted by primarily self-funded amateurs. In fact the word “scientist” is not added to the English language until 1833. So in short, much like bell bottom jeans resurgence into the fashion scene in the 90’s, citizen science may look different than it did back in Newton’s day, but it is hardly a new concept.
What was unique about this workshop was the diversity of the audience and the concentration on the value of using citizen science in education.The workshop was well attended, and included a collection teachers participating, or hoping to participate in citizen science in their classrooms, as well as organizations that currently support education and citizen science programs, Living Classrooms, National Aquarium, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and Blue Water Baltimore, to name a few of the organizations represented.
A recurring theme of the workshop was how the citizen science is a win-win situation for both educators and researchers. Citizen Science provides researchers with a mass quantity of data that would cost them too much time and money to collect themselves, and educators get the chance to engage students in the practice of actual science, while often offering students the opportunity to get outside. With the multiple benefits of Citizen Science it is no wonder it is now emerging as popular field in itself. For example the National Science Foundation (NSF) a major funder of scientific research reports that it now funds citizen science projects in all of their major scientific areas of study, indicating that citizen science is growing massively in popularity as a topic, and is highly interdisciplinary.
One of the projects highlighted as being successfully incorporated into the classroom setting include Project Budburst, a network of people across the United States who monitor plants as the seasons change. Project Budburst is a particularly educator friendly program, with a whole section of their webpage dedicated to education. Under the education section you can find useful information such as implementation guides and supplementary activities broken out into different grade bands. But that is not all; they also have resources for informal educators, undergraduate education, and links to the NEON Citizen Science Academy for professional development materials for teachers and others looking to implement Citizen Science programs into an educational setting. Another important feature of Project Budburst is that it lends itself to both long term and short term projects. You have the option to either submit a single report or regular reports, so whether you class only has time to go outside and do a onetime survey of a local park’s plants, or you have your class monitor the plants in your school yard throughout the school year, Project Budburst can accommodate your needs. Another perk about using this program is that not only is this data being used by scientist, but it is readily available to the public to do your own manipulations with.
Not a plant fan? That’s okay! Because the cool thing about citizen science is that it covers almost all areas of science so that there is always a project for every interest and every lesson plan.
Some places to start when trying to find citizen science projects are…
SciStarter
Citizen Science Central
Zooniverse (great for indoor / online activities)
If this workshop sounded interesting to you, then check out part 2! The second session of the Citizen Science workshop will be held on March 5th and its free! Also be sure to keep checking back on the great workshops provided by NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office on a variety of topics across the watershed.