Welcome to the 2015-2016 school year! Monika here from the Greater Farallones Association’s LiMPETS team. We are very excited to get into the field monitoring alongside our teachers and students. This past year, we have worked with scientists and teachers to improve our trainings and protocols. Our curriculum has been updated to align with Next Generation Science Standards and California state teaching standards. We’ve created a new and improved quality control plan which we are piloting this year. Increasing LiMPETS scientific rigor is a big goal of 2015!

The roll-out of our new Student Resources excites me the most. It includes quizzes, videos, and games for both Rocky Intertidal and Sandy Beach Monitoring. We encourage our teachers to direct their students to these resources not only because it will increase students’ understanding of California’s coastal ecology, but also it will give our data-users more confidence in student-collected data. Citizen science is gaining traction in the scientific community and we will continue to be the exemplary youth-based citizen science program.

Go to the Student Resources page to see some of these training materials and keep checking in for new ones this fall!