News - New Education Options
Have You Read the Scientific American Blog “The GLOBE Program: Making the Case for K-12 Citizen Scientists” Yet?
Have you read the Scientific American blog, “The GLOBE Program: Making the Case for K-12 Citizen Scientists” by Amanda Baker yet? If not, click here are read it today!
The article, published on 19 September, states that The GLOBE Program has spent the last 20 years making the case for K-12 students as citizen scientists. “In fact,” the article states, “it has made the case millions of times – with more than 10 million students collecting more than 140 million data points around the world. Their measurements have ranged from soil moisture to surface temperature to cloud observations and have provided data for numerous academic publications about the global environment.”
“Rather than creating stand-alone experiments or kits for classrooms, GLOBE involves students through collaborative, global campaigns. These campaigns are proposed by scientists and have specific training materials to ensure that data collected by a fourth grader in Milwaukee can be added to the equivalent data taken by a tenth grader in Prague. Contributing to global datasets not only gives students a chance to collect data that scientists can actually use, but allows them to compare their experiences and findings with other students around the world.”
In the blog, Dr. Tony Murphy, Director of the GLOBE Implementation Office, states that GLOBE campaigns give students a chance to learn about their local environment and see how it fits into a broader global context. Dr. Murphy also states that The GLOBE Program is first and foremost a K-12 citizen science program – and that he sees no reason why someone should have to wait until they are 18 to become a citizen scientist. And, as the article concludes, “GLOBE has shown a number of reasons not to wait … millions of reasons and counting.”
To read the entire article, click here.
type: globe-newsNews origin: GLOBE Implementation Office