From Citizen Scientists to Engineers

Abstract

Engineers are stakeholders in the urban education of minorities. They can directly impact the educational system's efficacy through their professional organizations, their workplace, and, perhaps most importantly, as individuals informed of the best teaching practices willing to serve as resource personnel. An assumption that grounds the National Science Education Standards is that students learn science best by problem solving authentic questions using real phenomena. Urban minority middle schoolers need more opportunities to directly participate in the scientific enterprise as citizen scientists. When students collect data rigorous enough to be used by others, they can be motivated to see themselves in the role of a scientist and/or engineer. Programs such as Global Learning and Observation for the Betterment of the Environment (GLOBE) offer school children opportunities to collect environmental data and publish it on the Internet. GLOBE data is especially useful to “ground truth” scientific interpretations of data taken by remote sensing devices on satellites. Scientists and engineers are an integral part of GLOBE. They decide what data needs to be collected, devise protocols to collect the data, help in the training of teachers, and communicate with students.