Nominations for Edublog Awards

Edublog Nominations

What is the Edublog awards:  "The 'Edublog awards' is a community-based initiative started in 2004 in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher blog sites for educational purposes.  The purpose of the Edublog awards is to promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media."-Steve Hargadon


For the most influential Teacher Blog, I wish to nominate The Future of Education discussion series.

• A long time follower of Steve Hargadon's work, especially his interviews via podcast, I have found him to be an ethical, intelligent, knowledgeable contributor to the ongoing dialogues around educational issues at all levels. His desire to move past surface discussions and challenge himself as well as his listeners is admirable. Moreover, he frequently succeeds in bringing issues to a higher level through his tenacious drive to uncover the deeper stories and/or possibilities.

For the best Ed Tech Blog, I wish to nominate Hack Education podcast.

• Audrey Watters' ability to follow the educational narrative week-to-week and report on areas she believes to be of unusual interest to educators at all levels succeeds in keeping me at least on the bank of the tech/ed current flow.
• Audrey Watters and Steve Hargadon combine differing, but equally insightful, views of the issues on both the front-and-back burners of educational debates. Both are equally committed to open source movements and offer an ongoing counter-balance to the increasing influence of business on curricular design and innovation.

Citizen Science or Childhood Naturalist – Further Thoughts

I continue to experiment with the best way to approach the diverse needs of students from grades N-12. A possibly useful way to refine the problem is to more closely consider the differences between programs intended to create Childhood Naturalists (C.N.) and those would that involve participatory Citizen Science (C.S.)

With this in mind, the following definitions are helpful.

Citizen Science is commonly defined as collaboration between scientists and non-scientists. It is recognized that lay participation in this effort has the benefit of encouraging community understanding of science processes even as it allows for long-term monitoring activities and/or the collection of data over a large geographic area that would be prohibitive for scientists to undertake on their own. Thus, it is a win-win situation.

A Childhood Naturalist would be a child who, to quote Howard Gardner (The Nine Types of Intelligence) is becoming “Nature Smart” by developing “the human ability to discriminate among living things (plants, animals) as well as sensitivity to other features of the natural world (clouds, rock configurations).” The relationship between children’s exposure to natural environments via positive and/or playful activities enhances their curiosity about the natural world. This is a fact supported anecdotally by outdoor educators as well as research. 

The differences between C.N. and C.S are especially helpful when considering the appropriate role for young students (N-6) in environmental education.  An article by  R.C. Jorday et al that appeared in The Ecological Society of America-August 2012, entitled: Key issues and new approaches for evaluating citizen-science learning outcomes provides one way to compare C.S. and C.N. The bulleted information is a summary chart from that article.

Individual Learning Outcomes

Increase in:

• Awareness & Understanding of ecology
• Understanding science processes
• Engagement w/ science & nature
• Motivation to participate in C.S. and/or naturalist activities
• Environmental Stewardship behaviors

Programmatic Outcomes

Improvement in

• Understanding natural systems
• Engagement with the public
• Understanding program plus & minuses
• Understanding community issues
• Understanding of participant motivation,  satisfaction
• Accessibility & utility of data
• Contributions to science research
• Relationship between program  & Community

The "Individual Learning Outcomes", desirable for students at all levels, should provide a starting conversation for any Citizen Science program. Additionally, they could be said to be the heart of Childhood Naturalist initiatives as well. Where C.N. and C.S. differ stands out much more when one looks at C.S. Programmatic Outcomes especially those that relate to data and contributions to science. I would argue that success of meeting C.S. Programmatic Outcomes will be more easily achieved with older students if we have built a sound C.N. program with younger students. In doing this, we would not be precluding young students from engaging in C.S., but rather suggesting that it needs to arise from personal, and/or school-based C. N. activities. The number of student-initiated “help the_”, “save the_” , projects that have sprouted at Harley the past few years suggests the enthusiastic energy students could bring to Citizen Science if it is cast in an obvious environmental framework.

Where either MS or LS students are involved, teachers need to be aware that data gathered for Citizen Science programs open to the participation of young students will rarely be incorporated into professional research. Still, it may carry useful anecdotal weight for developing professional studies.  Moreover, having to record and present data for outside consumption may have a positive impact on the quality of student work depending, of course, on how the teacher manages the project.

Unquestionably, US and/or motivated MS students can take part in Citizen Science as genuine collaborators and there are successful on-line examples of such programs. (http://participatoryscience.org/eels/introduction-eels) Yet, current studies indicate that the issues surrounding the collection of valid, reliable data with student participation is complex and, as such, a topic for another post.