Habitat Tracker: Learning About Scientific Inquiry Through Digital Journaling in Wildlife Centers

In theory, field trips are a great idea: Students escape the confines of their classroom to learn in a new, exciting environment. As many educators will tell you, however, few of these excursions live up to their pedagogical potential.

A researcher videos students during beta testing of the Habitat Tracker iPad app at the Tallahassee Museum.

"They become more of an obstacle course," says Sherry Southerland, an associate professor at Florida State’s College of Education. "How many things can kids see in a short period of time?"

Efforts underway at LSI aim to fix that problem: The Habitat Tracker project harnesses online and mobile technologies to improve field trips for fourth- and fifth-graders.

Teaming up with the Tallahassee Museum, a 52-acre complex featuring dozens of animals in a natural setting, researchers are designing lessons on scientific inquiry centered around visits to see bobcats, otters and other museum animals. Before the field trip, students learn about the animals using online resources and formulate scientific questions through class discussions. After the field trip, students analyze data they collected and present their findings.

In between, while on the field trip, students observe animals and record what they see. They are learning about wildlife, but that’s beside the point. The project’s main objective is more complex: to teach kids about the nature of science, a relatively new addition to Florida’s science teaching standards.

"Our goal in developing this project is to get students involved in thinking like scientists ‐ how they go about asking and answering questions, how they go about collecting the data needed to answer the questions," says Paul Marty, an associate professor at Florida State’s College of Communication and Information and the project’s principal investigator. "We don’t think these kids are going to learn anything about these animals at the Tallahassee Museum that they couldn’t read in a book. But they’re going to learn a lot about the process of learning about them."

To meet this challenge, Marty and his team turned to iPads. Students on the field trip use the device, loaded with a special app developed by the researchers, to record their observations of the animals, their habitat and weather conditions. This information is uploaded into a database that the young scientists use as they conduct research and develop questions about the animals.

Marty’s team is testing and refining the website and app. So far, the results have been promising.

"I think this brings science to life more than what we’re able to do in the classroom," says Rebecca Taylor, a fourth-grade teacher at Florida State University Schools, one of several North Florida schools partnering with LSI to test Habitat Tracker. "I have never been on a field trip where the students were actually this engaged in observations."

Like a pack of paparazzi, project researchers videotape, shoot photos and scribble notes during their beta tests as students enter observations into the iPads. Southerland, a co-principal investigator for the project, is encouraged by what she sees. "Students are being much more careful and taking much more time making observations of the organisms," she says, "so it’s less an athletic event and more an educational event."

For more information

See project press release, download project description (PDF) or visit the Habitat Tracker website.