Hello Mr. Bruce, thank you for the questions. Oddly, I think that certain topics - particularly spatially-related data and maps - are actually easier to conduct virtually. Sharing a map on your screen and zooming in and out is easy and fun to do. One of my favorite virtual classroom visits I conducted in the past year was working with 8th graders and showing them an interactive 3D topographic map of the Grand Canyon, and how to utilize the measuring tools to assess distances. I was able to show them and then turn them loose to try it themselves. Sharing that kind of exercise worked very well virtually. I think that making connections across topics may be a little more difficult, but would depend on the topics and online resources available. 

Hello Ms. Georgakopoulos, we are currently utilizing ArcGIS Online to map out our teacher/student activities during the past year so I don't have good quantitative data just yet; however, anecdotally I can tell you that our teachers who were able to stay in person with their students (those in private schools, in rural areas, for example), were able to continue with the GLOBE activities and data gathering moreso than our virtual ones. That is to be expected I suppose. The surprising thing to me (and the inspiration behind our video) was the myriad of ways in which our virtual teachers were still able to conduct GLOBE activities with their students despite not being in person. Some of our teachers even went the extra mile and had equipment delivered to their students for use while at home! This surprised us, and it's interesting now looking at the data they collected and analyzing it. As an example, where in the past a school's surface temperature measurements would be clustered on the school's grounds, during COVID, some of them are clearly dispersed throughout the community because the students were at home collecting the same kind of data. Very cool to see!

Thank you so much, John! As always, our teachers and students continue to inspire and amaze us! I will check out your video, too. Cheers, Sara

Hello Ms. Staus, and thank you for your question. In our original proposal, we designed our work so that we would focus on underrepresented students, so that goal has been with us from the get go. Much of our work has been in inner city urban areas, but also in some rural areas as well. Some of our partners also focus on ESL students, and have been developing materials specific to them. Our group is just one part of a much larger project that extends from coast to coast in the U.S., so we cover a lot of different areas. One strategy we are currently looking at employing to continue our reach is to conduct a spatial demographic analysis of the schools and districts we currently work with, and try to identify additional underrepresented districts to reach out to. That work is currently underway. Hope that helps answer your questions! ~Sara

Hi Dr. Chambers, great to hear from you. I believe that hosting the majority of our content online so that it's easily accessible to participants asynchronously is a practice we will continue post-pandemic. As an example, I can see us creating google classrooms and google sites for each of our efforts, even if they are held in person. This is something we did in the past, but not necessarily for every event. I can see it being a regular practice now. There are advantages to everyone in doing this, especially from our viewpoints as administrators (record-keeping/sharing media/etc.). On a side note, it's also been great to easily pop into a teacher's classroom virtually to assist with even little things as they need them!

That last is a great point!  Science help on call.  :-)

Thank you Celena, much appreciated!