Citizen Science Programs
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Provided by: Illinois Department of Natural Resources|Published on: April 25, 2025
Articles/WebsitesScientist Reviewed
3-12
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Synopsis
- This resource provides links and descriptions to a number of citizen science projects that students in Illinois can participate in.
- The projects largely involve data collection and wildlife spotting to help bolster baseline data to help scientists see changes in biodiversity or weather patterns.
Subjects: Biology, Civics
Authors: Illinois Department of Natural Resources
Region: Illinois
Languages: English
Teaching Materials
Positives
- This webpage gives students many options to become more involved in citizen science programs.
- The different citizen science programs can be adapted to a wide range of ages depending on teacher guidance and/or modeling.
- Illinois-based resources will help students become invested in the projects pertinent to their homes.
- Tons of resources attached to the citizen science program will help students dive into the environment around them.
Prerequisites
- Students should have a basic understanding of how data collection is done.
- Students should have an understanding of how seasons/weather affect a given population of animal species at any given point throughout the year.
- Some of the programs require an account to be created to receive all details of the citizen program.
Differentiation & Implementation
- Several of the different citizen science program links contain videos to help build students' background knowledge of the particular program being discussed.
- Students can decide which citizen science program seems more interesting to them and develop a potential passion project based on the description of the program link.
- Many of the different citizen science programs contain data recording and can lend themselves to creating different types of tables, graphs, and coordinate planes to read the data.
- Students can create a year-long calendar addressing which specific citizen projects could be done during a certain timeframe (due to weather, hibernation, and migration patterns).
- Students can come up with other citizen science programs that are not addressed on this webpage and create a proposal for a new program.
- Students can connect the citizen science programs to climate change in a cause-and-effect graphic organizer and discuss the different ways climate change (temperature change, changes in precipitation, extreme weather events, etc.) could change the data collection for the different citizen science programs.
This collection of citizen science programs features links and clear descriptions of each program. The page has quite a few broken links (which may be attributed to the government's recent policy of removing climate data sources from their repository). Despite these concerns, there are many excellent programs available that will allow students to see the impacts of climate change and other human activities in their backyard. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Teaching Tips
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Resource Type and Format
Scientist Reviewed
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Our review process ensures that every resource in our library reflects the current state of climate science.
Learn about our review process →
