• Home
  • About

ArtPlantae Today

Connecting artists, naturalists, and educators

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« Working as an Artist-in-Residence
From the Mountains to the Sea, ArtPlantae Kicks Off Event Season for 2013 »

Botanical Scavenger Hunt Develops Science Communication Skills

February 15, 2013 by Tania Marien

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, the event for which February is probably best known. Today I propose that there is a bigger and better event in February. This event is Digital Learning Day. A new national movement, the second annual Digital Learning Day was celebrated just last week. This national campaign celebrates “education champions who seek to engage students, celebrate and empower teachers, and create a healthy learning environment, personalized for every child.”

Allow me to stray just a bit from the usual drawing-specific topics covered in this column. I am not straying too far, really, as today’s featured activity can be implemented as a clever way of encouraging the collection of quality reference photographs — resources valued highly by all botanical artists and natural science illustrators.

Meet Wendy Walker-Livingston. Drawing upon her fond memories of scavenger hunts at summer camp, science teacher Wendy Walker-Livingston created a scavenger hunt about plants in which learning is reinforced through field work and technology. She describes her 21st-century scavenger hunt in the article, Botanical Scavenger Hunt.

Walker-Livingston’s field adventure is exactly what you’d expect a scavenger hunt to be — a mad dash with list in-hand and a sprint to the finish line.

What is different about Walker-Livingston’s scavenger hunt is that participants are not collecting objects. Instead, what they are collecting are images. In this case, images of 16 key plant characteristics used in plant identification (Walker-Livingston, 2009) that were collected using digital cameras and cell phones. Today, of course, you can add iPods and tablets to this list of image-capturing devices.

When conducting this activity, Walker-Livingston (2009) prepares students for their scavenger hunt by first introducing them to botanical terminology, plant morphology, plant classification and dichotomous keys. When distributing the list for the scavenger hunt, she tells students they have 50 minutes to collect photographs of the characteristics on their list and 10 minutes to download their images.

The day (or two) after the scavenger hunt, each student team is given 60 minutes to create a 3-minute multimedia presentation that includes a narrated description of the images they collected.

Walker-Livingston (2009) says her activity has been successful on many levels. Students love the activity, the multimedia project helps students verbalize their new knowledge and the project successfully addresses the various ways learners interact with the world, ways Howard Gardner describes in his theory of multiple intelligences.

Walker-Livingston’s Botanical Scavenger Hunt is easy to add to your teaching toolbox. This article can be purchased online for 99¢ from the NSTA store.


Literature Cited

Walker-Livingston, Wendy. 2009. Botanical scavenger hunt. Science Scope. 32(6): 31-34.



Related

  • Digital Learning Day
  • Visualizing Plants at the Botany Studio
  • Art, Botany & Society: Plants in the Limelight

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in botany, Teaching & Learning |

  • I’m curious about…

  • What Readers Are Reading Now

    • California
    • Earn a Professional Certificate in Natural Science Illustration at the University of Washington
    • Scientific Illustration in the Elementary School Classroom
    • Today's Botanical Artists On Using Photographs
    • Dry Brush Technique for Botanical Artists
  • Plants & You

  • Featured Guests

    Wendy Hollender (interview)

    Wendy Hollender

    Gilly Shaeffer

    Today’s Botanical Artists

    Society of Botanical Artists

    Billy Showell (interview)

    Billy Showell

    Sarah Simblet (webinar)

    Robin Brickman

    Mark Granlund

    Wendy Hollender (webinar)

    Diane Cardaci

    Katie Lee (webinar)

    Bruce L. Cunningham (webinar)

    Jane LaFazio (interview)

    Jane LaFazio

    Mally Francis (interview)

    Kandis Elliot

    Anne-Marie Evans

    Margaret Best

    Elaine Searle

    Mindy Lighthipe

    Niki Simpson

    Anna (Knights) Mason

    Helen Allen

    Birmingham Society of
    Botanical Artists

    Hazel West-Sherring

    John Muir Laws

    Martin J. Allen

    Institute for Analytical Plant Illustration

    Mairi Gillies

    Georgius Everhardus Rumphius

    Liz Leech

    Valerie Littlewood

    Heeyoung Kim

    Anna Laurent

    Linda Ann Vorobik

    Shawn Sheehy

    Gary Hoyle

    Katie Zimmerman

    Mariella Baldwin

    Anita Walsmit Sachs

    Ruth Ava Lyons

    Katie Zimmerman

    Kellie Cox-Brady

    Jennifer Landin

    Laurence Hill

    Gretchen Kai Halpert

    Susan Leopold

    Tina Scopa

  • Global Impact

    Botanists and illustrators strive to document conifers around the world.

  • Nature Near You

    Global Directory of Botanical Gardens
    Botanic Gardens Conservation International
    Search for a Garden

    National Park Service
    Search for national parks at the National Park Service website.www.nps.gov

    National Environmental Education Foundation's Nature Center Guide.
    Find Your Nature Center

    Rails-to-Trails
    Find a trail for hiking, walking, cycling or inline skating. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and its volunteers work to convert unused railroads into trails for healthful outdoor activities.
    Search their national TrailLink database to locate a trail near you.

    Sierra Club Trails
    Locate trails for hiking, cycling, climbing, and many other outdoor activities.
    Search Sierra Club Trails

  • © 2007-2022 by Tania Marien. All rights reserved.
    Contact Tania

    Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Artists retain the copyright to their work.

    The ArtPlantae® logo is a registered trademark.

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

WPThemes.


  • Follow Following
    • ArtPlantae Today
    • Join 1,788 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • ArtPlantae Today
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
%d bloggers like this: