Who is On Line Here?

I work with Acadia Partners for Science and Learning, a non-profit organizaiton that works with scientists, teachers, and students at the Schoodic Education and Research Center in Acadia National Park. Our job--my job--well ... we have a couple of jobs. One is to provide support for research at Acadia. Once you get to thinking about what goes on in a National Park, you quickly generate more questions than answers. What are the effects of an increasing coyote population on the rest of the park ecosystem? What effects are invasive fire ants having on other ants and on the park food web? Why do the fish in two adjacent ponds have such different levels of mercury? What role do eels play in the park food web? What effects should we anticipate from global warming in this park made up of islands? And so on.

Another job--one that actually takes up more of my time most days--is to figure out how to connect this scientific work with science education in the schools. There are a lot of good reasons to want to make that kind of connection. For one, the park needs help in collecting data--not just in the park, but around the state and the region. Acadia may be made up of islands, but the park is not an island ecologically. Getting a better of understanding of eels, or mercury burdens in fish and in the critters that fish eat, is important not just inside the boundaries of Acadia, but also in the broader ecosystem of which Acadia is one protected part.

Another reason to connect the science in the park with schools is that students and teachers get excited about engaging in work that has use beyond the walls of the classroom That excitement, that engagement, opens new opportunities for science learning. And the opportunities go beyond the fact that teachers and students get engaged in the work: the questions emerging from Acadia are truly open-ended questions. Too often, scientific "experiments" in school are really just exercises where the goal is to get the right answer -- and then you're done. The work that teachers and students do in cooperation with Acadia Partners isn't like that. We don't know what the answers are. The teachers and the students can help us add to what we know. Students can find what science is all about by doing it.

But ... there's always a "but" ... it turns out that integrating the work of scientists with the work of teachers isn't so easy. What that means is that a lot of what I end up working on here at Acadia Partners is the question of how we -- along with other National Parks and other research organizations -- can do a better job of connecting day-to-day scientific work with the day-to-day work of schools.

This blog will be a way to share what we are working about, what we need to know, and what we learn with others who care about science and science education.