Tag Archives: Classroom

News

Introducing the Planet Hunters Educators Guide

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Julie A. Feldt is one of the educators behind Zooniverse.org. She first came to us in Summer 2013 as an intern at the Adler Planetarium to develop and test out Skype in the Classroom lessons and ended up joining the team the following winter. Julie was the lead educator in the development of the Planet Hunters Educators Guide.  Here she shares some information on the development and contents of this resource.

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In collaboration with NASA JPL, we have developed the Planet Hunters Educators Guide, which is 9 lessons aimed for use in middle school classrooms. This guide was developed for each lesson to build upon each other while also providing all the information needed  to do them alone. Teacher can choose to do one lesson on its own or the entire collection. Each lesson was planned out using the 5E method and to be accomplishable in a single 45 to 60 minute class period with some Evaluate sections as take home assignments. In development we focused on the science behind Planet Hunters and utilized JPL’s Exoplanet Exploration program and tools from PlanetQuest in order to connect with our partners in this field.

Through this guide, we want to introduce teachers and their classrooms to citizen science, exoplanet discovery, and how the science behind the Planet Hunters project is conducted. Lesson 1 starts by acquainting the class with what citizen science is and looking at several  projects, mostly outside of the Zooniverse. This lesson is great for teachers who just want to talk about citizen science in general and therefore it encompassesmany different types of citizen science projects. The rest of the lessons go into the understanding of exoplanets and using Planet Hunters in a classroom setting.

We wanted to give teachers the lessons they may need to build student understanding of the research and science done in Planet Hunters. Therefore, Lessons 2 through 5 focus on developing knowledge of possible life outside our solar system, the methods used to discover new worlds, and what makes those worlds habitable. For instance, in Lesson 2 students explore our own solar system with consideration of where life as we know it, directing them to the idea that there may be a habitable zone in our solar system. The students are asked to break up into groups to discuss how each of the planets compare with consideration of their location . We provided solar system information cards, see an example below, for students to be able to determine the conditions necessary for life as we know it to develop and survive.

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Lesson 6 is purely about getting students acquainted with Planet Hunters, specifically how to use it and navigate the website for information. This lesson can be great for the teachers that just want to show their students how they can be a part of real scientific research. After, students use the project data to find their own results and visuals on exoplanets found in Planet Hunters. Something to note, lesson 7 and 8 are pretty similar, but Lesson 8 incorporates a higher level of math for the more adventurous or older classrooms. Lesson 9 either wraps up the guide nicely or can be a fun activity to add to your science class where the students creativity and imagination comes out through designing what they believe a real exoplanet looks like, see summary from first page below.

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We hope our teachers enjoy using this product! We would love you hear how you have used it and any feedback that could be used in any future development of teacher guides for other projects.

Education

ZooTeach and Resources for the Classroom

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Have you got your students whirling with excitement over Cyclone Center ?  Are they positively passionate about Planet Four?

Here in Zooniverse HQ, we like nothing better than hearing from teachers and educators about how you’re using Zooniverse projects in your classrooms and other learning environments.  Over the last year we’ve traveled to several conferences and meetings and heard about all kinds of innovative ways that teachers have put Zooniverse projects to use with their students.  We need you to share your amazing ideas!

ZooTeach is a companion website to Zooniverse containing lessons and resources aimed at helping teachers bring Zooniverse projects into their classrooms. Anybody can upload and share activities; you only need a Zooniverse login to contribute.  This fall we’ll have several new lessons and activities created as part of the Zooniverse Teacher Ambassadors Workshop to share with you.  We hope that you’ll consider sharing some of the ways that you’ve found to bring citizen science into your classroom or check-out ideas from other educators.

Education

Teachers Wanted For Planet Hunters Educators Guide Piloting

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We need you and your students to help us craft a top-notch resource for teachers!  Educators at the Adler Planetarium have been hard at work creating an educators guide aimed at helping teachers bring the thrilling hunt for exoplanets into their classroom.  The first draft is nearly ready and we want to know what you think.

We’re looking for US-based 6th -8th grade teachers to try one or more lessons from the Planet Hunters Educators Guide this spring with their students.   Each lesson can be taught as a stand alone activity and takes approximately 45 – 60 minutes of class time.  We want to know what works, what needs to change, and any other feedback you can provide.

Besides, one of your students may just discover a new planet!  You can’t get that in gym class (although physical fitness is very important). 

If you’re interested, please email the following information to education@zooniverse.org. 

 

Name:

State:

Grades & Subjects Taught:

Number of Class Sections (if applicable):

Education

Under the Sea and On the Moon with Third Graders

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We have had a great response from teachers in the Chicago area to our offer of making classroom visits. Yesterday marked out first visit to West Ridge Elementary in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood.  After consulting with Ms. Tschaen, the third grade science teacher, we decided to present Seafloor Explorer and Moon Zoo to the students.  Apologies in advance for the lack of pictures, we were having way too much fun to think about proper documentation. 

One of the challenges while preparing for this school visit was figuring out a quick and easy way to explain crowdsourcing to third graders.  I scoured the web for a nifty interactive or video,but in the end decided a low-tech solution, a story, was the best solution. I told the students that when I was a kid my friends and I loved to play soccer.  One we were planning to play but my Mom told me I wasn’t allowed to until my room was clean.  When I was a kid, the floor of my room generally resembled a soup of toys, clothes, books, and papers.  Cleaning it was no small task and usually entailed the better part of a whole day.  I asked the students how they thought my friends and I solved the problem.  Every group offered the solution that we could work together to clean my room and then have time to play soccer together.  Voila! The principle of crowdsourcing quickly and easily explained.  Granted, I settled on a somewhat simplified definition, that crowdsourcing is getting a bunch people to help solve a bigger problem, but it did the trick and the students “got it”.

Next we were ready to set the stage with how Zooniverse projects utilize the efforts of many to solve problems involving large datasets.   With the first two classes, we decided to test a newly developed Seafloor Explorer classroom activity. For time’s sake we modified the activity by focusing on species identification and left out ground cover identification component.   After a 10 minute group discussion of Seafloor Explorer’s science goals and how to identify the different animals we were off and running.  Just like with the example of cleaning my room and soccer, the students called out that we needed more people to identify the 30,000,000 + images comprising this project’s dataset.  Success!  They were challenged to work together as a class to beat the time it took me to identify species on 40 different cards.  Working together each class about 1/3 of the time it took me to do it alone.  Double success!

Laura engaged the third class in lunar adventures using Moon Zoo.  Students learned a little bit about the history of moon exploration.  Next they discussed craters and the different ways we can find out information about our nearest celestial neighbor.   After a brief introduction to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, they divided into groups to explore individual portions of the moon.  Students worked together to mark any craters larger that their thumbprint on their section of the moon.  They tallied the total number of craters on their group’s individual moon section and compared them to the other groups’ moon sections. Finally students identified potential sites for a lunar lander to touchdown.

So, what did we learn from our adventures with third graders?  I’ve long suspected that, while students certainly have the ability to participate in most any Zooniverse project, it sometimes helps to introduce the project “offline”.  This may help students feel more secure when they begin participating on a project’s website.  Many teachers I’ve spoken with point out that students don’t always feel empowered in their practice of science.  By frontloading students with a little bit of a project’s background content and walking through the classification task together, students can easily see that they are more than capable to make an important contribution to current scientific research.  Working as a group also fosters a sense of community that we, as a class, are working together to help scientists make important discoveries and maybe even making some important discoveries ourselves.   I’m sure that there will be many lessons to learn over our remaining visits to Chicago-area classrooms.

News

Zooniverse Groups

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Today we let loose a new feature called Zooniverse Groups. We’re always being told how our projects are used by schools, open evenings and other groups of people. This is great, and we encourage the use of our projects in education. We are often asked by teachers if it is possible for them to manage a group of students and keep track of their classifications. Today’s release is the first step in allowing this type of management by educators and others who want to share the Zooniverse.

Groups Screenshot

You can access Groups from your account settings on Zooniverse Home. By default you will see the options to create a group. You do this by by giving the group a name and quick description. Once a group has been created (you will be the first member) you can then invite others to join in. You do this by viewing the group’s settings page (the cog icon next the group’s name). Here you can invite people, either by knowing their Zooniverse user ID, or by sending them a unique group link.

As an example, if you follow this link – http://www.zooniverse.org/account/new?group=ab55cbbd – you’ll join my example group called ‘Rob’s Example Group’. If you already have a Zooniverse ID you can then sign in and join the group, or you can create an account and join as a new Zooniverse user.

My Test Group

As the owner of a group you can see how many classifications each user has made since joining the group – and we have provided a couple of charts showing this data. We’d really like to hear from you about the other features you’d like to see included as a group owner. As a group member you get to see who else is in the group and the contact details of the group owner. Note to group owners: your email address is shared with members of the group.

Groups currently only tracks your Galaxy Zoo activity. We had to start somewhere and we get the most requests for groups from schools using Galaxy Zoo. We plan to add in support for other projects as time goes by. Group members can leave a group at any time, and group owners can remove members at any time. Group owners can delete a group at any time and this will delete all membership records – we don’t store your group activity after deletion.

Groups is in an early stage and we’re keen to hear what else you’d like to use it for. If you have feedback please get in touch via team@zooniverse.org.