My Wild Neighbors

A site to support teachers who want to connect their students to local organisms through nature journaling and iNaturalist

Polly Diffenbaugh. Bio632C. Biology in the Age of Technology, Ecospot

Why is connecting your students to the plants and animals around them important?

No matter where you live, you have wild neighbors. Research suggests we will be more connected to the place we live if we know who our wild neighbors are and why we might like to protect them (1). Everyday observations by community members can contribute to conservation of important species and increase pro-environmental behaviors (2). Using digital tools like iNaturalist and Seek and low tech strategies like nature journaling will help your students to connect with where they live, will provide data useful for research and will support them to learn more about the places they visit. Community scientists, just like you, are using these tools to learn more about the plants and animals around them while connecting with others, using just their smart phones and their own observations! Here, in California, we live in one of the most diverse states in the US. Let's use our resources to get out there and learn more about our wild neighbors!

I suggest we start with using our own powers of observation to become curious and aware of the organisms around us. We can answer a lot of "Why?" questions simply by watching and paying attention. Once we we have been immersed in the outdoor world, we can use apps like iNaturalist to consult where else a species might live or patterns of behavior (7). By introducing your students to these resources, you are not only contributing to global community science research, you are also connecting your students to their local area and increasing their engagement and connection to place (2). Everywhere on our planet, there are iNaturalist observations to engage with in order to learn about both your local area and anywhere else you might like to go.

All images in image carousel are our local California wild neighbors, courtesy of the author.

HOW DO YOU GET STARTED?

The observational strategies of nature journaling are uniquely complemented by the high tech tools iNaturalist and Seek. These build on each other to support your students to ask and answer their own questions.

This site explores how to use the apps iNaturalist and Seek and the observational tool of nature journaling to become more connected to the place you live. Both place attachment and place bonding occur when we make meaning and connection to where we are (3).

Community based science apps like iNaturalist and Seek cause students to feel more connected to nature because they tend to feel more connected when they can name and interact with what they see (4).

Nature journaling asks students to get out into nature to make their own observations using a framework like "I notice, I wonder, It reminds me of" and words, pictures and numbers to increase their scientific noticing skills (7). The act of writing and drawing, but not having to make a pretty picture, increases our ability to remember and pay attention (8).

iNaturalist

INaturalist has both an app and a web based interface, you collect observations on the app, and you can use the computer interface to learn more about the organism and interact with other observers to confirm the species you have seen

Seek

Seek is an app that does not require a log in. It simply shows you what is around you and uses an AI interface to identify what you see. There are monthly challenges on the app you can do with your students

Free Nature Journaling Curriculum

The curriculum written by John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren includes ideas and strategies for including NJ in your classroom. It is available as a free download. There are also teacher and instructional videos on the site.

HOW DO OTHER TEACHERS USE iNATURALIST?

I interviewed three teachers, Beverly Owens, Sam O'Brien and Monica Ventrice, to find out how they use iNaturalist in their classrooms. These ideas might help you to think about what you could do!

Ms. Owens

High School Chemistry Teacher in North Carolina

Ms. Owens uses iNaturalist and Seek personally and realized that she could engage her students and encourage them to learn about what is around them. She takes her students out on "brain breaks" during school and they walk around the schoolyard. Once, a bug got into the classroom and the kids were excited to "Seek" it!

For a project, she asked her students to get into the mindset of anyone being a scientist or an explorer. She asked her students to use iNaturalist to learn about a local organism and then they created posters to share in the classroom.

Additionally, Ms. Owens has encouraged her students to work on the monthly challenges in Seek as a way to stay engaged and continue learning about where they live.

She plans to start incorporating the powers of observation supported by nature journaling next.

Ms. O'Brien

Middle school ScienceTeacher in Oakland, California

Ms. O'Brien started using iNaturalist during virtual school. Students completed a project where they chose a location and then investigated it through the lens of a biologist, a geologist and an environmentalist. They were able to think about how different people might look at the same place and evaluate the differences.

iNaturalist helped her students to search and learn about plants and animals in the area that were related to their investigation.

As a final capstone project, students created Google sites as tour guides to share about their locations.

After the project Ms. O'Brien noticed that students continued to search for organisms they saw and would come back and talk to her about them.

Ms. Ventrice

High school Biology Teacher in Los Altos, California

Ms. Ventrice uses iNaturalist in her high school biology classroom as a way to get her students outside and exploring the local environment.

For the last two years, she has created iNaturalist projects and then challenged her students to get as many research grade observations as possible, at least 10 per month. She even created a competition between her classes.

This worked because her students are all over 13 and could have their own iNaturalist accounts. She set the project so that only her students can add observations, but all people can add comments as identifiers.

Here are links to her last two projects:

2022 Project 2021 Project

She suggests that you connect with local top identifiers and start to work with them. She was able to do this and it has supported her work with her students.

PROJECT EXAMPLE: Who are your wild neighbors? How can you find them?

You can duplicate this example for any local park or area close to you where you either want to take your students virtually or as preparation for a real life adventure. Connecting to our local parks and reserves increases our connection to place! (5)

Video Tutorial: How to use iNaturalist to Figure Out What is Around You

Use this video tutorial to quickly see how you might use iNaturalist to help your students learn about what is around them. There are two examples on this video, the first one will be finding out what lives in an area that you plan to visit, to prime yourself, or your classroom (students) to go to that place, in this example, the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. The second example will be searching for an animal or plant of interest to see if it has been seen recently near you and to learn more about it, for example the California Mountain Lion and sightings in Santa Clara county. Priming our students and helping them to feel ready to visit a place can increase what they are able to learn from a field trip or project (6).

Sample Lesson Plan: Using iNaturalist in the classroom to explore and make connections about possible food webs

Video Tutorial: Combining the ease of seek with nature journaling to identify organisms

Use this video tutorial to see how easy it is to use Seek to identify the plants and animals around you. Seek connects to a database of information and can fairly accurately predict the species you are looking at. You can also connect the app to your iNaturalist account so you can get feedback and improve Seek's identification strategies. Seek also shows you what are the most common species that have been found in the local area where you are.

Other helpful links to Video Tutorials and Curricular Plans You can use in your classroom

iNaturalist youtube channel: This page has so many ideas curated by iNaturalist to support your students to use the many resources available

For more ideas about how to use iNaturalist in the classroom, I recommend you check out this amazing set of lessons, including instructional videos, from Anne Lewis. Her lessons include searching for species by biome, looking for migratory and emerging species, environments and food webs and tropic levels.

And, for more ideas for how you can support your students to learn more about and use iNaturalist, look at this curated playlist by Taylor Wichmanoski.

NOW WHAT: After you go, what can you and your students do with your iNaturalist observations? ?

After you collect and upload your observations to iNaturalist, they will look like this.

You will be prompted to choose what iNaturalist thinks you are most likely seeing. If you are not sure, you can choose not to identify at the species level.

Once you have uploaded, there will be a map indicating where you saw the organism as asll as your photo(s). Other users of iNaturalist can now agree with your observation or make another suggestion. Once there is agreement, the observation becomes research grade and can be used for community science research projects.

I used my photos and videos from my trip to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve to create the Thinglink below.

All photos in this image carousel are screenshots of observations I have made on iNaturalist, from the following link: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=ptero&verifiable=any

Example: Thinglink Map of the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

All photos and videos in this Thinglink courtesy of Polly Diffenbaugh

Once you have primed your students to search for what is out in the location you are either planning on visiting or have already been do, you might like to collect the information to share with others, or to use your own explorations to share what you want your students to focus on in a certain area. This map is an example of what you or your students could create before or after visiting a field trip location. In this map, you can start anywhere and move through the exploration at your own pace. This site (Thinglink) has free accounts for educators as well as many tutorial videos to help you create your own Thinglinks. There is an embedded poll question which you can set up in thinglink as a place students must answer to move on.


Resources for the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

How can I help you? Email me or fill out google form linked below! Or go to the comments page.

In my work with teachers, I often hold workshops and professional developments about how to incorporate connection to place in their work. This is so important when we consider how we might increase pro-environmental behavior and connection to community (4). I would love to hear how you are thinking about this and also what you might like help and support with. Please fill out this google form to provide me with information and ways to support you!

Page Engagement

This entire site is linked to google analytics to analyze page views and manage viewers and engagement. Additionally, I teach in a teacher education program so I have included the google forms link that I would give to teachers who are participating in my teacher workshops in order to get feedback and adjust the workshop later.

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