June 13, 2023

As the heat settles in, that beginning-of-summer excitement may be wearing off. Kick things up a notch with the updated Y4Y Citizen Science course! You might also take a cue from the IMLS STEM-Rich Afterschool Making Project to explore how STEM and the arts can intersect.

Science, wonder, and creativity have been interwoven into our lives since the beginning of time. Young children are natural scientists, always asking why and how, and always exploring new ideas. Using citizen science activities in your program can revive that early sense of wonder. To help you get started, see the Y4Y Citizen Science course. Learn to plan and implement exciting activities where young people use the same scientific process skills as professional scientists to contribute to real-world scientific explorations, connect with their local and global communities, develop critical learning and life skills, and explore college and career options. Take a look at our course tools, which range from student interest surveys to project rubrics, and include a Citizen Science Research Brief to help you understand the benefits for students.

What’s the Deal?

Here are some of the real benefits of incorporating citizen science into your program:

• Students learn the scientific process in a hands-on way.
• Students engage in authentic work that connects to the real world and holds their interest.
• Students build 21st-century skills such as inquiry and collaboration.

Crafting Creative Scientists

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the U.S. Department of Education’s STEM-Rich Afterschool Making Project combines science and the arts through the concept of Making, which is “a broad grassroots movement that inspires young people to be creative, imaginative and inventive and offers new and powerful approaches to STEM learning.” Walden University lists some of the following as benefits of incorporating Makerspaces into student environments:

• They provide hands-on learning opportunities.
• Students can learn resilience through Makerspaces.
• Students learn communication, creativity, and collaboration skills.
• Makerspaces encourage educational equity by introducing STEAM concepts to a wide range of ethnicities and backgrounds.

Left and Right Brain!

Sometimes, science has a reputation for being “boring,” “rigid,” or “too left-brained.” So, the next time your staff or students exhibit apprehension towards the topic, show them that there’s no “right” way to do science, and that’s the beauty of it! With Y4Y’s Citizen Science course and inspiration from the IMLS STEM-Rich Afterschool Making Project, your students will no doubt be excited about this artfully infused way to learn.

August 6, 2021

A sense of purpose drives most success in life, whether that success is as a parent, a home health aide or president of the United States. By tapping into that human instinct in every one of your students, you can make an immeasurable impact on their lives. Two Y4Y courses, Citizen Science and Civic Learning and Engagement, offer ways to help students find a path to community participation that can give them a sense of greater purpose well beyond their years in your program.

Citizen science means that everyday members of the community can make impactful contributions to scientific advances. This crowdsourcing of information takes little training or even deep understanding of all the principles at work, though often participants in a citizen science project gain significant knowledge through their involvement. Have your students felt like bystanders for the last 18 months, helpless as a new virus wreaked havoc on the world? Biomedical scientists are always looking for volunteers to advance their work. CitizenScience.org has a full list of projects soliciting help in all aspects of COVID-19. Explore many other topics, ranging from studying water quality to space feature hunting, at CitizenScience.gov or through your own internet searching. Just keep these simple tips and tools at hand:

• Discover what your students are passionate about and where they most want to make a difference. It might be in your backyard or on a global scale.
• Whenever possible, align student interests with school-day curricula, using Y4Y’s Assessing Alignment Efforts tool.
• Reflect on your impact together in a structured way. You can draw inspiration from former successful projects by NASA, Astro Quest or this engaging TED Talk on citizen science.
• The Y4Y Citizen Science Research Brief offers more detail on the potential impact on your program.

In a similar way, Y4Y’s Civic Learning and Engagement course offers helpful guidance for channeling students’ interest in their community into meaningful contribution. Youth of today are increasingly engaged in the world around them. Whether this is because of social media, cameras on cell phones that make more human experiences universally accessible, or a less tangible raising of collective consciousness, there’s no denying that young people today are aware of the problems around them and they’re eager to fix them. Public figures like climate change activist Greta Thunberg, education advocate Malala Yousafzai, and gun control activist David Hogg may very well reflect the passion and drive you see in the students in your program.

It’s never too early to start sowing those seeds of community purpose in your 21^st CCLC program. Start by

• Familiarizing yourself with child development characteristics and youth development stages you can tap into to spark childhood interest in community.
• Considering the potential partners in your community.
• Brainstorming civic engagement topics with your students.
• Checking out the rest of Y4Y’s tools for guiding students through civic learning and engagement.

Citizen science and civic engagement aren’t mutually exclusive. You may opt to offer both kinds of opportunities to your students to expand the breadth of your program. Studies tell us that they’ll expand their skills, feel empowered, grow into responsible and productive citizens, and even live longer by establishing the practice of being contributors. Most famously, the Harvard Grant study, now 83 years running, demonstrates that “people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community are happier, they’re physically healthier and they live longer than people who are less well connected,” according to Harvard psychiatrist Robert Waldinger. Your program, along with the school-day, may be the first communities your students are experiencing. Help them expand that vision of community beyond your walls, your city and even the country. Your students will benefit, and so will the world.

October 1, 2020

Like so many people around the world, your program staff may be looking for ways to make the most of social distancing. Citizen science has enjoyed a tremendous uptick as people turn to the outdoors for many more types of experiences. Citizen science is an exciting addition to STEM programming, but where should you begin? Review the basics of Y4Y’s Citizen Science course to make the right project choices and fit them into your program schedule. Armed with a list of criteria that matter to you, you can make a SMART perusal of reputable online resources.

• Consider training your staff on Assessing Citizen Science to empower them to seek out high-quality activities.
• The Y4Y Citizen Science Experience Planner will ensure your projects aren’t shortening your day! Use this tool to be mindful of your time and financial resources.
• What skills are you targeting in your citizen science participation? Download and customize the Y4Y STEM Process Skills Checklist to keep you focused.
• Y4Y’s Reflection Questions for Staff tool is a quick and effective way to measure the outcomes of a project.

As time permits, you and your staff can mine other Y4Y citizen science tools to make the most of your program’s offerings.

Not sure where to start your project hunt? In 2016, Y4Y compiled an annotated list of citizen science resources, and many are still active. Here are some other projects that are hot today:

• The Cornell Lab of Ornithology notes that through its eBird webpage, “your sightings contribute to hundreds of conservation decisions and peer-reviewed papers, thousands of student projects and help inform bird research worldwide.”
• NestWatch, also hosted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “is a nationwide nest-monitoring program designed to track status and trends in the reproductive biology of birds. Participating in NestWatch is easy and anyone can do it.”
• SciStarter is a clearinghouse of “science we can do together.” To locate the perfect project, visit its Project Finder, enter a word or phrase in the Search box, and include your location, the kinds of environments available to you, and the age group of your scientists.
• National Geographic’s iNaturalist webpage “helps you identify the plants and animals around you. Get connected with a community of over a million scientists and naturalists who can help you learn more about nature! What’s more, by recording and sharing your observations, you’ll create research quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature.”

Remember, citizen science does more than expose your students to STEM activities. Young people get to experience firsthand what it’s like to “act locally and think globally” as they contribute to national or international projects to help achieve a greater goal. Citizen science reinforces the notion that we are citizens not just of our city or town, but of the planet.

August 7, 2020

Every day, your students make choices that affect their future. You want them to understand that their choices matter — and enlarge their view of what’s possible. Here’s some valuable information you can use to make sure they consider career options that involve science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM).

Let students know that

New opportunities are opening up. Cultural shifts and initiatives to offer equal opportunities in STEM careers mean greater gender and ethnic diversity than in the past. “Increase diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM” is a goal in America’s Strategy for STEM Education. Outdated ideas like “girls aren’t good at math” and “science isn’t for everyone” have been exposed as myths. Increasingly, STEM fields are attracting more people like Shuri, the fearless young woman who’s the chief science and technology officer of the high-tech nation Wakanda in the movie Black Panther.

STEM is opening up. You might have a student with the potential to create a new tool or product that will benefit humanity. But if no one in his family has gone to college, he doesn’t know any scientists or engineers, and he’s struggling in math class, he might think a STEM career is beyond his reach. Leaders in STEM education, however, say STEM is much more than the sum of its parts. Modern STEM education also incorporates the arts and design as well as skills like problem solving and behaviors like perseverance and cooperation. Students can tap into their strengths and interests to create their entry point. In his book Curious, for example, Ian Leslie says Apple founder Steve Jobs was “a merely competent technician” but it was his broad range of interests (including music), combined with a drive to succeed, that led his company to launch the first successful MP3 player.

Your 21^st CCLC program is the perfect place for students to explore STEM because you can

• Introduce interesting STEM experiences in a low-stress, high-support environment.
• Tap into student voice and choice and give young people time to play or “tinker” with STEM ideas and materials.
• Use project-based learning to help students connect STEM topics they’re learning in school with real-life problem-solving opportunities.
• Engage local organizations and people with STEM connections so that students see that STEM is all around them — and is a possible career pathway for people like them.  

Y4Y is your “go-to” for STEM because it has resources like

• Free online professional development courses with ready-to-use tools in STEM, citizen science, project-based learning, strategic partnerships and college and career readiness
• Project and activity ideas from four federal agencies that have partnered on STEM Initiatives with the U.S. Department of Education’s Nita M. Lowey 21^st CCLC Grant Program: the Institute of Museum and Library Services (making and tinkering); NASA (engineering design challenges); the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (watershed project activities); and the National Park Service (place-based citizen science)
• A downloadable guide to designing computational thinking activities and curated resources on computer science, coding, robotics

These days, STEM is at the forefront as the world looks to research scientists for a vaccine that will end the coronavirus pandemic. Take advantage of this moment to gather students (virtually, if need be) around the idea of STEM as something that’s relevant to their lives — and a career path filled with as much potential as they are.

May 19, 2020

Gratitude, put simply, is thankfulness in your heart and mind — a sentiment that often leads to a desire to give. We see this everywhere today. People, including students, want to give something back to those who are doing the most. Frontline medical professionals and grocery workers are receiving an avalanche of gratitude through signs and songs, ad campaigns and social media blitzes. How can 21^st CCLC programs “give back” right now? One answer: citizen science.

Citizen science is a form of crowdsourcing in which everyday people give their time and energy to help scientists conduct real science experiments that could make the world a better place. Check out Y4Y’s Citizen Science course to learn how to incorporate citizen science into your afterschool or summer program. The course will inspire you to use virtual learning to get your students started on a meaningful adventure in learning and giving.

There are many resources on the internet to connect your students to global citizen science projects. Currently at the forefront of people’s desire to give back is how they can help combat COVID-19. Citizenscience.org compiled a number of resources and suggestions on how to contribute. The University of California, San Francisco is performing a citizen science project around the disease. They’re asking for adult participants, so this is a great way to engage families.

Concerned that this topic might be too much for your younger students? Never fear! There are many citizen science projects to choose from. Zooniverse asks volunteers to observe animals in the wild. Scientists have developed an online game to speed a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease. Scistarter.org (website may not load in some browsers) has a searchable bank of projects, many of which are feasible during quarantine.

Y4Y course tools that may be of great use while you’re interacting with students virtually include the Student Engagement Tips for Grades K-12, More Citizen Science Resource Links, and the Family Participation in Citizen Science tool. One of the most important things you can do for students is give them opportunities to contribute. Citizen science is an ideal way to do just that.