scholarly journals A Model for Creating Connections and Building Collections-Based Curricula for Pre-College Educators

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e27037
Author(s):  
Gabriela Hogue ◽  
Molly Phillips ◽  
Marc Cubeta
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
National Science Teacher Association ◽  
Science Standards ◽  
The North ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
National Science ◽  
K 12

Science is increasingly emphasized in high school classrooms and compliments current Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math (STEAM) educational initiatives. Successful educational programs and activities must now be aligned to state and national science standards, including Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The NGSS contain three dimensions: practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. Natural history collections and collections data naturally complement these three dimensions. However, many educators are unfamiliar with collections and unaware of the resources available through data aggregators such as the Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio). How can we make educators aware of these resources and empower them to implement these resources as educational tools in their classrooms? At the 2016 Incorporating K-12 Outreach into Digitized Collections Programs workshop and 2017 National Science Teacher Association meeting, iDigBio staff discussed these questions with educational experts from the United States. The consensus was that activities needed to align with appropriate teaching standards, as a bare minimum, and that building relationships with the target audience was crucial to introducing new educational materials into the classroom. Once educators become comfortable and familiar with new resources via hands-on training, they would be more likely to implement them into their respective classrooms. In July 2018, a 3-day workshop “Drawers, Jars, and Databases: Teaching the Hidden Science of Natural History Museums" was held at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (NCMNS) in Raleigh. The workshop was designed to serve as a pilot program to determine if training and building of relationships with local educators will increase use of digitized collections data in the classroom. Partners hosting this workshop included staff from iDigBio, the MicroFungi Thematic Collections Network, and NCMNS. This presentation will expand upon methods used to address and achieve workshop goals of increasing the knowledge of natural history collections and collections data, as well as, increasing the competency for implementing collections-based activities utilizing data aggregators in the classroom.

scholarly journals Engaging K-12 Audiences with Biodiversity Data through Advancing Digitization for Biodiversity Collections

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e26473
Author(s):  
Molly Phillips ◽  
Anne Basham ◽  
Marc Cubeta ◽  
Kari Harris ◽  
Jonathan Hendricks ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Science Standards ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Digital Collections ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
K 12

Natural history collections around the world are currently being digitized with the resulting data and associated media now shared online in aggregators such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio). These collections and their resources are accessible and discoverable through online portals to not only researchers and collections professionals, but to educators, students, and other potential downstream users. Primary and secondary education (K-12) in the United States is going through its own revolution with many states adopting Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS https://www.nextgenscience.org/). The new standards emphasize science practices for analyzing and interpreting data and connect to cross-cutting concepts such as cause and effect and patterns. NGSS and natural history collections data portals seem to complement each other. Nevertheless, many educators and students are unaware of the digital resources available or are overwhelmed with working in aggregated databases created by scientists. To better address this challenge, participants within the National Science Foundation Advancing Digitization for Biodiversity Collections program (ADBC) have been working to increase awareness of, and scaffold learning for, digitized collections with K-12 educators and learners. They are accomplishing this through individual programs at institutions across the country as part of the Thematic Collections Networks and collaboratively through the iDigBio Education and Outreach Working Group. ADBC partners have focused on incorporating digital data and resources into K-12 classrooms through training workshops and webinars for both educators and collections professionals, as well as through creating educational resources, websites, and applications that use digital collections data. This presentation includes lessons learned from engaging K-12 audiences with digital data, summarizes available resources for both educators and collections professionals, shares how to become involved, and provides ways to facilitate transfer of educational resources to the K-12 community.

scholarly journals Questioning The Fidelity Of The Next Generation Science Standards For Astronomy And Space Sciences Education

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Stephanie J. Slater ◽  
Timothy F. Slater
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Next Generation Science Standards ◽  
National Standards ◽  
Unexpected Finding ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Science Standards ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Space Sciences

<p class="AbstractSummary">Although the <em>Next Generation Science Standards</em> (<em>NGSS</em>) are not federally mandated national standards or performance expectations for K-12 schools in the United States, they stand poised to become a de facto national science and education policy, as state governments, publishers of curriculum materials, and assessment providers across the country consider adopting them. In order to facilitate national buy-in and adoptions, <em>Achieve, Inc</em>., the non-profit corporation awarded the contract for writing the <em>NGSS</em>, has repeatedly asserted the development of the Standards to be a state-driven and transparent process, in which the scientific content is taken "verbatim", from the 2011 NRC report, <em>Frameworks for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas</em>. This paper reports on an independently conducted fidelity check within the content domain of astronomy and the space sciences, conducted to determine the extent to which the <em>NGSS </em>science content is guided by the <em>Frameworks</em>, and the extent to which any changes have altered the scientific intent of that document. The side-by-side, two-document comparative analysis indicates that the science of the <em>NGSS</em> is significantly different from the <em>Frameworks</em>. Further, the alterations in the science represent a lack of fidelity, in that they have altered the parameters of the science and the instructional exposure (e.g., timing and emphasis). As a result the <em>NGSS</em> are now poised to interfere with widely desired science education reform and improvement. This unexpected finding affords scientists, educators, and professional societies with an opportunity, if not a professional obligation, to engage in positively impacting the quality of science education by conducting independent fidelity checks across other disciplines. This could provide a much needed formal support and guidance to schools, teachers, curriculum developers, and assessment providers.</p>

On the land mammals of the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, by John Henry Keen, with a catalogue of specimens

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. G. Sealy
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Natural History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Haida Gwaii ◽  
North Central ◽  
Queen Charlotte Islands ◽  
The North ◽  
Annotated List ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolution Of Mammals

From 1890 to 1899, the Reverend John Henry Keen collected plants and animals in the vicinity of the Anglican mission at Massett, on the north-central coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii), British Columbia, Canada. Keen's prodigious collecting efforts resulted in the first detailed information on the natural history of that region, particularly of the beetle fauna. Keen also observed and collected mammals, depositing specimens in museums in Canada, England and the United States, for which a catalogue is given. Several mammal specimens provided the basis for new distributional records and nine new taxa, two of which were named for Keen. In 1897, Keen prepared an annotated list of ten taxa of land mammals of the Queen Charlotte Islands, including the first observations of natural history for some of the species. Particularly important were the insightful questions Keen raised about the evolution of mammals isolated on the Islands, especially why certain species, abundant on the mainland, were absent.

The Reduviidae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera) of Alabama, with a morphological key to species

Zootaxa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4688 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-198
Author(s):  
C.SCOTT CLEM ◽  
DANIEL R. SWANSON ◽  
CHARLES H. RAY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Natural History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Key To Species ◽  
Auburn University ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
Assassin Bug ◽  
Morphological Species ◽  
University Museum

Alabama is one of the most speciose states in the United States, yet many common groups of organisms, including assassin bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Reduviidae), have yet to be fully documented. The purpose of this manuscript is to identify all known assassin bug species occurring in the state using literature records and specimens from natural history collections, most notably the Auburn University Museum of Natural History Entomology Collection, to provide new state records, a checklist, and a morphological species key of the Alabama Reduviidae. All total, 61 species within 36 genera and 10 subfamilies are reported from Alabama. Additionally, 40 new state literature records are documented: 34 from Alabama and six from other states. 

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