From Field Trip To Field Guides

Mr. Q really enjoys field trips but he feels the students don't take them seriously and that they come away from these trips without learning anything of substance. His middle school science curriculum is primarily based on life sciences and ecosystems, so field trips should be a key element to student motivation and learning. This has not been his experience.

Mr. Q's school is located within a few blocks of one of the best-preserved natural habitats in the region. There are several naturalists on staff who are knowledgeable and anxious to be of service to schools. Mr. Q had noticed on the last field trip that the students did not seem particularly interested in the informational signs that mark species and features in the park. One of the naturalists remarked, "I wish we had a more in-depth, kid-friendly field guide to use for these classes. One that kids could take with them or access virtually and return to when they get back to class."

Mr Q thinks this is something his students might be able to interested in being involved in. Using what he has learned about authentic learning and the comment that the naturalist made, Mr. Q decides that the creation of an online field guide describing the park's ecosystems, written by kids for kids, would be the culminating product for his class, and that technology would be the key to making this happen. The field guide could be printed, but would be primarily designed for visitors with a smart phone or other portable device.

Mr. Q begins by organizing his class into two committees: Abiotics and Biotics. Each member of the biotic and abiotic committees is then assigned to subcommittees for data gathering purposes: biotic subcommittees on flora, fauna, and interactions complement abiotic topics of climate, soil, and water.

Mr. Q provides the students with several examples of well-designed field guides, collected from websites for parks from around the world, and together they identify the key characteristics of the best of these guides. From those characteristics, and from the content standards in the science curriculum, Mr. Q works with the students to create a rubric for assessing the work done by the committees.

Each team will use a wiki to gather and organize the content for the field guide. The field guide content development is done through three field trips during the course of the year. The trips are scheduled in the fall, winter, and spring to capture the status of the selected ecosystems throughout the year. Using the tablets or their own smartphones, students use the cameras on these devices to collect images. Whenever possible, HDR (High Dynamic Range), built into most tablets and smartphones, is used to sharpen images. For field notes, VoiceText is used to allow voice notes to be turned instantly into text for later transfer to a word processor, or the students are annotating notes right on their tablets. All these images and notes will be uploaded to the wiki where the students are ready to access them using their laptops in order to create the field guide pages.

Mr. Q monitors the progress of each subcommittee. He requires each member of those committees, working individually, to create a summary report to both solidify their learning, and to serve as an assessment of their readiness for the project.

Mr. Q is amazed at the difference in the field trips. The students are focused and purposeful throughout the day. The students treat the naturalist and Mr. Q as valuable co-collaborators. After each trip, several class periods are spent on the laptops, editing text and media, and drafting articles in subcommittees.

After the third and final field trip, students are given two weeks to finalize the field guide in two formats; Web and print. Some entries are done within subcommittees and some require cross-committee collaboration. Working on desktops and laptops in Google Sites, for the web guide construction, and in a word processor for the print version, the final field guide is produced published on the Web.

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