PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #47: Education: K-12.
Wednesday, August 7. Presentation from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM. Exhibit Hall B & C, TCC

Integrating student observations into ecological lessons.

Bierwagen, Britta¹, Bracken, Heather^*,1, ¹ National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara, CA

ABSTRACT- The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) has been running a successful outreach program called Kids Do Ecology (KDE) for the last five years. The program is a partnership with Los Marineros, a local marine science program for 5th graders in Santa Barbara, California. The goal is to teach the scientific method through original ecological experiments facilitated by scientists associated with NCEAS and the university. This year we have expanded our educational program to emphasize interpretation of data that students collected. Students participate in field trips through the Los Marineros program, including whale watching and a trip to the Channel Islands. During these trips students identify and record the location and number of species marine mammal sighted in the channel. We developed the Marine Mammal Pages as an extension to our main KDE web site to display data collected over the past six years. The web site teaches ecological lessons about individual species, migration patterns, species-environment interactions, and limitations to observational data. This approach parallels the overall mission of NCEAS of analysis and synthesis of data. We assessed the success of our web pages through student and teacher surveys in the classroom, electronic surveys available on the web site, and web page statistics. Based on student and teacher feedback these web pages are a useful addition to the curriculum. We hope to extend the impact of these educational pages beyond Santa Barbara schools through patnerships with similar programs in other parts of the country or world.

KEY WORDS: science education, marine science, student observations, outreach