Tackle Plastics for World Oceans Day
Posted on April 20th, 2018 by Mary Lord
Clean a beach, create art, or help monitor marine debris as a citizen scientist. Check out these lesson plans and other resources for celebrating World Oceans Day June 8.
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Tags: Citizen Science, Competitions for Students, Environmental Engineering, Internet Resources, marine debris, marine debris monitoring and assessment project, Marine Debris Program art contest, NOAA, ocean plastic, Teacher Resources, University of Georgia college of engineering, washedaway.org, Web Resources, world oceans day
They can earn badges for community service, first aid, hiking, and car maintenance. Now, some 1.6 million Girl Scouts of the USA will be able to qualify for a new set of badges – focused on STEM.
When Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010, Notre Dame engineering researchers created an online system that let students review hundreds of photos and reliably classify the structural damage. The effort is just one example of how “citizen engineers” and “citizen scientists” are advancing research in areas from astronomy to air pollution to penguins. Even snowflakes!
Middle school students learn that ordinary people like themselves can make meaningful contributions to science by reviewing examples of citizen science projects on Zooniverse, an interactive website. They then form “engineering teams” to brainstorm projects for their own community and design conceptual interactive websites that could organize and support them. 
Want to engage your students while helping scientists get the “big picture” on what’s happening to bird populations worldwide? Grab some binoculars and join the annual Great Backyard Bird Count, which takes place February 17-20, 2017.
To celebrate its 100th birthday and engage the next century’s environmentalists, the National Park Service is opening parks to 4th graders and their teachers and parents for free. Every Kid in a Park includes trip planning tools and teacher activity guides. No time or funds for field trips? Take a virtual tour of the Grand Canyon or explore resources for teaching history to citizen science.
