Citizen Science Day (April 13, 2019) Program Ideas

From "The Cardigan Newsletter", the brainchild of two youth librarians from OK, a monthly newsletter packed with information on all things youth librarianship. It arrives on the 20th of every month in your inbox if you subscribe. You can also access previous issues in their google drive. Here's just one of the articles published this month:

Learn Citizen Science Deepen your knowledge on a topic related to Children’s Services. Allie Research has shown that the most meaningful learning happens when students are engaged in activities that expect them to think and behave like professionals in the field. Creating activities where students are able to engage in activities that mirror the real life tasks of chemists, computer programmers, mathematicians, engineers or archeologists can help students not only begin to think like these professionals, but gives them real-world application to the science they are learning. This positions Citizen Science as a great tool to engage elementary students in powerful learning, whether at the library or at home.  Citizen science is the process by which the public is actively engaged in the scientific process in pursuit of new scientific knowledge. Citizen Science is a government initiative that emerged to enable people from all walks of life — of varying ages, experiences, skill sets, and interests — to partner with professional scientists to advance real scientific research (source). In January, Science News for Students, posted an article titled, “Kids Make Great Citizen Scientists.” The article describes a simple citizen science project that elementary students can participate in to help NASA scientists, while also helping them meet national science standards. NASA collects data from citizen scientists through a project called S’COOL, or Students’ Cloud Observations On-Line. It recruits people from all around the world to observe clouds at lots of different times. It’s so simple, because all students have to do is report their observations. These large numbers of observations help NASA scientists to make sure their satellites are working correctly. This also gives students a chance to talk about different kinds of clouds and the best way to describe clouds. Currently, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, SciStarter, Arizona State University, and NISE Net are working together with six public libraries in Arizona to create Citizen Science Toolkits in hopes of supporting Libraries as Community Hubs for Citizen Science. The toolkits are in the last phase of testing and you learn more about their project in their libguide. Citizen science in the library is a trend that has great benefits, not just for adults, but also for our youth. Below are some ideas to introduce citizen science to your library and students: Citizen Science Day is April 13, 2019. Do a book display and resource table about Citizen Science that week to start a conversation and gauge interest. Browse Scistar.org for some age-appropriate citizen science projects to either incorporate in a program or to promote at another related program. For those of you all doing the Collaborative Summer Program, A Universe of Stories, NASA has some Citizen Science projects too! There are some children’s books about this topic. Check out Bat Count: A Citizen Science Story and Moon Crab Count: A Citizen Science Story to share with your kids. Have you personally participated in or led a library program using a Citizen Science project? We’d love to hear about it and share it with our subscribers! Email as at thecardigannewsletter@gmail.com or message us on Instagram (@thecardigannewsletter).