Thanks for checking out our video Catherine! Each groups of students came up with their study focus through the iWonder process of WeatherBlur. Students made observations and asked, "I wonder..." questions and posted them to the WB website at the beginning of the school year. Common themes emerged from these iWonder questions and with the support from teachers and research scientists, student groups formed and investigations took shape. Believe it or not, these themes are student-created and student-driven, which has been exciting to see! 

Hi Jaime, thanks for your questions! We offer an annual 2-day Summer Institute as PD to help teachers get ready for the school year, provide resources and network. Throughout the school year we also hold weekly Zoom meetings to allow teachers to check-in, ask questions or trouble-shoot with others. We are currently opening WB up to anyone who may be interested in joining! If you or someone you know is interested in learning how to join, please let me know. To your second question, WB could easily fit into an urban setting. WB is designed to allow students to ask questions about their natural environment whether that's in a community garden, a local park or in their schoolyard.    

Hi Dante- in the past we've found that students have found significant increases in data literacy across all grade levels by deploying an interactive "Graphical Interpretation Assessment" pre-post that was developed based on data literacy in the Common Core State Standards in mathematics. We've also studied students' understanding of and ability to explain the science process and found that students were able to explain significantly more steps from pre-post. Interestingly, we found that collaborating both in and out of the classroom was significantly related to changes in their ability to explain the science process. This year our research is really focusing on linking computational thinking and computational data analysis and citizen science.

Thanks, Alexandria. This is very interesting. We have a new project to develop a preliminary framework for assessments that connect civic skills and science learning. I see that some of the aspects your project is considering are somewhat similar. We are currently defining the competencies that are relevant, including collaboration, evaluation of data sources and analysis, and argumentation practices. 

Hi Rachel, thanks for these great questions! Because WB has been around for about 12 years, we have a core group of four scientists who have been working with us from the beginning, however, students and teachers are encouraged to reach out to local community members, researchers, scientists for support in their investigations. A great example of this is the Mississippi classrooms needed help on their "microplastics in drinking water" investigation and reached out to Mississippi State University and teamed up with researchers focused on this topic. Scientists do join teachers in the Summer Institutes for some of the sessions; they also have their own separate orientation to the program as well. 

Hi Brian! Thanks for checking out our video. Over the course of this three-year project, we are working to highlight areas that are natural overlaps between citizen science and computational thinking and then support teachers as they build on those skills with their students. While CT has various definitions, we have landed on thinking of it as 4 big buckets - Abstraction, Algorithmic Thinking, Pattern Recognition, and Decomposition. Of these 4 buckets - we are finding success working with our teachers and students around skills needed in the area of pattern recognition. We have partnered with Tuva, an online graphing platform, to dig deeper into the data and observations students are collecting. After a year of planning with a core group of dedicated WB teachers, we are unveiling our supports for teachers at this summer's institute. We are looking forward to tracking student and teacher growth as they use these tools and supports - so stay tuned over the next two years for the results of this work! In the meantime, you can learn a bit more about the CT aspect of Weatherblur from our page on the MMSA website: https://mmsa.org/projects/weatherblur/. Thanks for checking us out!

Hi Channa, students' data is collected in the WeatherBlur website (open access) weatherblur.com. In many cases students from different schools are working on the same investigation topic and share data through the website. Once students have completed their data collection and analysis they do "Action Projects", which are community-based projects based on students' research and findings. Action Projects range from community presentations, banning plastic straws at school, starting recycling programs and building birdhouses for local nursing homes. Not only are students able to educate their communities about their research, they give back to their communities.   

Hi Kevin, that's exciting to hear others are doing similar work! We provide an annual 2-day Summer Institute to help teachers get ready for the school year, share resources and network. Throughout the school year we also hold weekly Zoom check-ins for teachers and scientists to come together, ask questions and trouble shoot. We're also developing online modules for WB users that will be posted to the WeatherBlur website. These modules will provide information on the basic structure of WB as well as resources to support teachers during the Computational Thinking phases of WB (investigation development and data analysis).  

We are so lucky to have your talented daughter part of WeatherBlur! The microplastics investigation work has been amazing to see and incredibly inspirational. These students truly are the leaders of tomorrow! 

Hi Holly, thank you for checking out our video! At the end of the school year, students do an "Action Project" related to their investigation findings. This is a way for students to not only present their research back to their communities but to give back to their communities. For example, students who were involved in the bird count investigation this year are 3D printing birdhouses that they will donate to their local nursing home, along with informational brochures about the most commonly seen birds in the community.   

Awesome! Love the idea of 3D birdhouses and connecting with the local nursing home community and creating informational brochures.  A great way to translate and communicate what they have learned!

Thank you James, for your generous comments! I just checked out your video and yes, our programs do have a lot in common. WeatherBlur will be expanding and we're currently looking to recruit new schools throughout the country. We should try to connect to talk more! 

Thanks for checking out our video, Jessica! WB teachers connect quite a bit through our weekly Zoom check-ins and students interact a lot through the WB website especially when they're posting iWonder questions. Students also get to interact during online panel discussions that we hold twice a year. My hope is to continue increasing student interactions online through the website and in video conferences.   

Thank you Miyoko! It's so exciting to hear that WeatherBlur helped inspire Bird Cams Lab! I just checked out your video and I can see the similarities. It's wonderful that both of our programs are able to reach audiences to help make science and research more accessible. Anyone can be a scientist!