Crossing Boundaries: Integrating Emerging Technologies into Biodiversity Studies by Secondary Students

Crossing Boundaries, funded through NSF’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, is interested in collaborating with NSDL projects that are developing tools or resources relevant to ecological studies by middle and high school students. Crossing Boundaries enables science teachers to teach in new ways, using emerging technologies to engage their students in exploration of biodiversity conservation issues both locally and abroad. For example, Crossing Boundaries students pose questions about biodiversity and address these questions using Science Pipes. With this NSDL-funded workflow tool, students can readily select relevant components of massive biodiversity datasets and create visualizations for analysis and communication of the results. Crossing Boundaries also helps teachers to use GIS, GPS, Google Earth, wikis, podcasts, and blogs in their science teaching. If you are developing technological tools or digital resources of potential use in ecological investigations, we welcome discussion about potential collaboration.