Using Citizen Science to Learn About Climate Change: Investigating the Phenomenon of Increasing Carbon Dioxide Levels Using Fossil Ginkgo Leaves.

Science classrooms are most engaging when students have the opportunity to engage in the practices of scientists. Unfortunately, many attempts to incorporate science into the classroom are disconnected from real scientific practice. When classroom science is divorced from genuine scientific research, collaboration also suffers. Students may sometimes collaborate with each other during traditional labs at school, but too often, the end goal is simply for students to see what the instructor wants them to see. Citizen science, however, gives students the opportunity to help scientists with real-world research projects. In a well-designed citizen science project, no one knows what the results will be! This creates the conditions for further collaboration: between students and teachers, between students and professional scientists, and even between students and the general public. Gung ho for Ginkgo (Enthusiastic for Ginkgo) is a citizen science project in which students help scientists by counting cells in online microscope images. Then students graph their data, analyze their graphs, and write about their results. Furthermore, the project could provide insight into the impacts of future climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]