Building Scientific Literacy and Resilience through Community Citizen Science in the Gulf of Mexico

Description: Public Lab seeks to change how people see the world in environmental, social, and political terms by teaching them how to investigate environmental concerns using inexpensive, do-it-yourself techniques. With this award, the project team proposes to build a community citizen science network of Biloxi, Mobile, New Orleans, and Pensacola residents who can collect and use data to enhance environmental protection and increase community resilience. Through a series of workshops, Public Lab team will encourage communities to engage in collaborative approaches to prioritizing and answering local environmental questions. Over the course of this project, Public Lab will work to encourage collaborative learning and civic engagement via community-led scientific exploration and investigation.

Youth-Led Community-Based Citizen Science Projects in the Gulf Region

Description: U.S. Gulf Coast communities face a convergence of environmental concerns with distinct social, cultural, economic, political, and regulatory factors that create complex situations that many of these communities find themselves challenged to address. For this reason, the Gulf region is both a fitting and important place to foster youth to become civic-minded, scientifically literate members of society engaged in building more resilient communities. This project aims to build the capacity of Gulf region youth to address environmental issues affecting their communities by engaging them in hands-on science learning and practice relevant to their lived experience. The project will pilot a community citizen science learning model that positions young people as knowledge producers rather than knowledge consumers. With teacher support, students between 12 and 18 years old will lead research projects on local environmental topics that they have identified as important. Materials developed and refined through the pilot effort will be made available for use by other educators throughout the region.

Host a Goal Setting Workshop

Workshop: Draft an Issue Brief with a Group

Host an Issue Brief Workshop

Issue Brief: Sedimentation in the Florida Panhandle

Water Quality Testing at Turkey Creek

LaMotte and Earth Force Low Cost Water Monitoring Kit

Hurricane Harvey Industrial Impact Image Sorting

Africatown Blueway-Public Lab NAS Workshop, Prichard, AL

Mapping Workshop at Docville Farm in Violet, LA - St. Bernard Parish

Pensacola Stormwater Issue Brief

Accurate Soda Bottle Rain Gauge

Educating a New Generation of Advocates

Recharging New Orleans: Rain Barrels and Environmental Justice

Fighting the Flood: Community Activism and Education in Pensacola

The Africatown Connections Blueway: Legacy and Rebirth

Sustain the Nine: Resilience in the Lower Ninth Ward

Gulf Coast Educator's Workshop Summer 2019

Student-Led Inquiry Project Tracker

Creating a Box Plot to Identify Potential Outliers Using CODAP

Student-Led Community Science Curriculum Data Collection Resources

What Factors Influence Our Environmental Problem? (Lesson Plan)

How do communities respond to environmental problems? (Lesson Plan)

Workshop III: How Have Other Communities Tackled This Problem?

Workshop IV: What do we know, and what do we want to learn?

Workshop VI: How can an environmental study effect change?

Workshop VII: How will we study our environmental problem?

Workshop VIII: What will we do to conduct our study?

The Discovery of the Clotilda and the Community 'Still Fighting'

Notes and Reflections from Hurricane Preparedness Discussion/Dinner

Compile Screenshots and URLs for Aerial Images of Harvey Damages in a Spreadsheet for Reporting

Rain Barrel and Rain Gauge Build workshop with 7th Ward Residents

Workshop V: How Do We Study an Environmental Issue?