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This summer, The Raptor Center’s (TRC) Education Department has embarked on a new mission—to help teachers engage students in real-life science in the outdoors. By the end of the summer, TRC, along with partners LT Media Lab, U of MN Extension, and Wolf Ridge and Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Centers, will have provided 60 free demonstrations of its newest online science curriculum, Outdoor Investigator, to 600 teachers across the state of Minnesota.
Outdoor Investigator, an interactive online citizen science curriculum, directly engages students in the process of scientific investigation. The curriculum’s six sections require that students get outdoors to observe and wonder about birds and the natural world, ask questions, develop research hypotheses, plan a realistic research project that can be tested, and analyze their data. The online tool then helps students draw a conclusion and build a report to present to classmates and teachers, according to education program manager Mike Billington.
“The curriculum inspires these young minds to become more conservation oriented and possibly even consider careers in the environmental sciences,” says Billington.
Once teachers became acquainted with the curriculum, early estimates showed that as many as 15,000 students would participate in a citizen science project using Outdoor Investigator by the end of the 2018 school year.
Illustration by Molly Murakami