SPRING HAPPENINGS WITH FIELDSCOPE
Spring is here in the Northern Hemisphere and many of the projects hosted on FieldScope are at their most active, with volunteers going out to participate in a shared experience of collecting important data about our world to contribute to scientific knowledge and understanding. Read on to hear what is new with FieldScope, the community of projects that utilize the platform, and BSCS Science Learning.
UPCOMING WEBINARS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Great Smokies Webinar
Digging into Data: A Great Smoky Mountains National Park and FieldScope Tutorial
April 21, 2022, 3:30 - 5:00 p.m. (ET)
Free but registration required
Real-world data that illustrate environmental change due to threats like air pollution and climate change can be hard to find. Join park rangers from Great Smoky Mountains National Park and data specialists from FieldScope to learn and practice how to use data collected by community scientists. After an introduction to the free FieldScope platform, we will explore data collected by students over the past 13 years in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This workshop will help you to guide your students through similar data explorations that can be used as they ask and answer their own scientific questions or use one of the prepared lesson plans.
Climate Education Pathways
The Climate Education Pathways project is seeking high school teacher-collaborators for an exciting opportunity. BSCS Science Learning in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are developing an 8-week, digital high school science unit about climate and biology, designed for the NGSS.

Teachers selected to participate in this study will be supported in localizing the unit for their students and community. Additionally, these teachers will take part in professional development with approaches that emphasize using scientific evidence to construct understanding.

The original deadline to apply for this study has been extended until all spots are filled!
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT
The WaterInsights program is now integrated with FieldScope!
WaterInsights is a multiple award–winning science project, initially created by 16-year-old Sahithi Pingali from India to help international communities collect local water quality data. In this project, participants can order low-cost kits directly from WaterInsights and contribute data from locations all over the world. Supports are in place for educators, and classroom kits and materials are also available.

PLANNING A LILAC FESTIVAL

Many cities and towns around the United States have festivals to mark the changing of the seasons. Some are popular events highlighting local plants, like the garlic festival in July in Gilroy, California, which celebrates the fragrant crop, or the daffodil festival held in April in Newport, Rhode Island, which celebrates the city’s over 1 million blooming daffodils. 

When should we plan a lilac festival in our community? That is the question asked in a lesson created by BSCS Science Learning using data hosted on FieldScope from the Budburst citizen science project. This lesson is all about how data can be used to predict the best time of year for a lilac bloom festival in a community in the United States. 

This lesson, designed for middle and high school students, is free to access and part of a series of activities called Invitations to Inquiry with Data Using FieldScope that integrate different data sets from projects hosted on FieldScope. These inquiries are designed to support the Science and Engineering Practices from the Next Generation Science Standards. Access the lilacs lesson and full suite of materials here. 

BECOMING FIELDSCOPE SAVVY
To help our users successfully navigate and use the FieldScope platform, the team has also launched a Help Center. Here, you can discover ways to

The FieldScope team released a new suite of updates to the platform in early March 2022, intended to enhance your experience in working with FieldScope. Read this article in the FieldScope community forum to learn about some of these new changes:
  • Adding Hyperlinks to Data Story Descriptions
  • Enhancements to Embeddable Data Stories 
  • Updating Your User Profile 

You can also view webinars hosted in fall 2021 to learn more: