Education Week - May 8, 2013 - 9

EDUCATION WEEK

MAY 8, 2013

www.edweek.org

SucceSS in the claSSroom
iS reQuireD
June 28–30, 2013
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD

Photos by Heather Ainsworth for Education Week

(Washington, DC, Metropolitan Area)

and mapping tools.
“FieldScope allows students to
see the impact the entire watershed has on the quality and health
of the bay and think about their
own personal impact and connection to it in the process,” said Cara
LaFlamme, a 7th grade science
teacher in the Fairfax County, Va.,
district, who has participated in
the program the past three years.
Ms. LaFlamme said she teaches
her students to use FieldScope to
make connections from the data
and analysis they perform on
water collected from a nearby lake.
While providing a number of
features, the software is actually
simple to use, said Daniel Edelson,
the vice president of education at
the National Geographic Society.
Additionally, it makes data collection more accurate, and, importantly, helps students visualize
and understand the impact and
relevance of the science they perform, he said.
One feature, for example, shows
students how the location of the
water they collect connects to
other watersheds and eventually
travels to the bay.
Since December 2012, over
10,000 people have visited the
Chesapeake Bay FieldScope site.
The software is also being used
in a few new citizen-science projects, such as one on documenting
frog calls and another on seasonal
changes in fruit and flower populations.

Making It Count
Technology is also providing capabilities for increasing the size
and scope of citizen-science projects. In the Lost Ladybug project, for example, citizens submit
photographs of ladybugs in their

locales that help only three scientists draw conclusions on the presence and absence of ladybugs in
locations throughout the country.
Although technology can increase the reach of citizen-science
projects, its impact depends significantly on a project’s research
goals and participants, according
to John Fraser, the president of
the New Knowledge Organization, a New York City-based think
tank focused on science and social
change.
Students are just as capable as
adults of generating accurate and
relevant scientific data, but to be
of significant value to students,
citizen science should have a scientific purpose in which students feel
their contributions are worthwhile
to society at large, said Mr. Fraser,
who has studied citizen-science
projects.
“Trekking through the mud
and rain with hip waders to look
at frogs is the kind of thing that
helps kids develop deep knowledge
about themselves and the world
around them,” he said. “Will all
kids [performing citizen science]
work with bugs and animals their
whole lives? Probably not, but
when they know their work has
concrete impacts on the world,
and the people care about the data
they collect, the learning outcomes
can be magnified.”
Coverage of science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics education
is supported by a grant from the Noyce
Foundation, at www.noycefdn.org.
Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
> > The BEYOND SCHOOL blog
tracks news and trends on this
issue. www.edweek.org/go/

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Education Week - May 8, 2013

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