The Citizen science section on the Science Learning Hub

The Science Learning Hub has everything your class needs to get started on Citizen science projects. This short video gives an overview of our resources.

Transcript

Our Citizen science section can be accessed in the top navigation bar from anywhere on the Hub. Citizen science projects are volunteer efforts that involve regular people like educators, learners, and whānau, in real world science investigation.

Citizen science is not just a fast growing way of engaging students in authentic science practices. Increasingly, it's becoming how scientists gather large amounts of usable data.

Our introduction to citizen science article offers a primer where you can browse types of projects, find out what students think about being involved in citizen science, and discover the range of scales, from projects central to Aotearoa New Zealand, all the way to international-level efforts.

From there, another good resource for those new to citizen science is our two-part Teacher PLD series. These are webinars designed with educators in mind and include video and slideshows packed with useful information and reflections from experienced teachers.

The Tips for Planning article has been developed alongside teachers who've engaged their students in citizen science projects. It's got some great ideas to consider when you're identifying a project to work on.

There are lots of citizen science projects and the list is always growing. It can be daunting to find one that will fit your classroom. The Science Learning Hub has collated a variety of projects that you can search by topic or according to which science capabilities are being engaged.

Our site will help you identify what a project is capable of, how you might use it in the classroom, and what sort of learning outcomes might be associated. You can see we've highlighted what focus you might choose for the Nature of Science or science capabilities. We've suggested some key science concepts and learning outcomes that might be relevant.

We've unpacked what the project involves. You can see that students would be setting up a survey area, collecting their data, recording their results in an online database. The project is repeated and students can interrogate the findings, which you can use as part of a wider learning unit.

Further down, you can see we've identified other resources that might be helpful in planning for this project. The Science Learning Hub Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao wants to make it easy for you and your learners to get into citizen science.