Workshops

Each summer GeoKids LINKS collaborators host an interactive summer workshop for all GeoKids LINKS participants, including teachers and fellows.  Workshops are designed to help fellows prepare for the upcoming school year, offer professional development opportunities for participating teachers, and strengthen the efforts of the collaboration.

Workshops feature a variety of skill-building sessions including:

• Team Building Activities
• Curriculum Development
• Technology Skill Building
• Lab Experiences
• Reading Discussions
• Field Trips

Participating teachers can receive science education credits and a stipend for participating in the workshops.

Examples of previous workshop sessions include:

• Urban Wilderness: Transforming the city into a living classroom
• Water in the City: From Rooftops to Rivers
• Building Scientific Literacy: GeoKids Through the Years
• Technology – Research Presentation Preparation
• Teacher Presentations on Classroom Management
• Field Trip to the Stroud Water Research Center
• Teaching in an Urban Setting
• History of the Wagner Free Institute of Science

August 2015 – Twenty K-8 grade teachers from GeoKids LINKS partner schools participated in a one-day workshop with interactive sessions to increase their science content knowledge on urban ecology.

Activities included:

• A discussion with Dr. Karen Snetselaar, Saint Joseph’s University Department of Biology, on how we as a society define wildness, challenging conventional notion that urban spaces are not considered “wild”
• Using field notebooks to foster observational skills of urban wildlife including birds and invertebrates.
• Exploration of citizen science projects and ideas for integration into the classroom.
• A presentation by Fr. John Braverman, SJ, Saint Joseph’s University Department of Biology, of wildlife photography, featuring birds common to SJU’s campus.
• A presentation by GeoKids LINK Alum Tony Croasdale on his work engaging Philadelphia high school students with citizen science projects.

Support for this workshop was provided by Saint Joseph’s University.

More educational resources on citizen science projects:

• The Lost Ladybug Project* | Cornell University
• Citizen Science | The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Bugs in our Backyard | Colby College

*This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0741738. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).