A large part of this growth for students was documenting the underrepresented species that get overlooked for the larger organisms, such as mammals. After the BackyardBio experience, a student wrote, “I had always just seen the plants around Green River, but never had studied them. It was a really fun experience to actually observe, study, and learn about these plants. I learned about plants that I never knew existed or had even heard about."
For several days, we spent time outdoors at our school building to get familiar with how the iNaturalist app worked, work out any issues with technology, and utilizing the app to gain insight into the species living outside our school building. A student noted about her time exploring the school grounds, “I had a fun time exploring and furthering my knowledge about various species that I see everyday. Using iNaturalist was super user friendly, which made the process more enjoyable and entertaining.” Appreciation for local species continued when students discovered a group of Wyoming Horned Toads that make their home right outside our school building. This led to natural questions about species and what the differences in biodiversity would be if we observed different local areas especially along the Green River, which runs through our town.
We took this opportunity to explore our local waters and surrounding areas in two distinct places in order to answer student questions focused on differences in biodiversity. As a class we searched for and captured images of plants, terrestrial insects and spiders and macroinvertebrates through iNaturalist.
