Students Discover: Shark Teeth Forensics 

Students Discover: Shark Teeth Forensics or as we like to say #TeamJaws is a citizen science project through the Kenan Fellows Program funded by the National Science Foundation and many others. For this project my fellow teachers and I will be Dr. Bucky Gates and Dr. Lindsay Zanno at the North Carolina Natural Science Museum learning about their research and how we will be able to apply that research and help our students do real science in our classrooms.

As an second year 5th- 8th Grade Visual Art Teacher from Pitt County NC I am coming into this project with a very unique perspective and I really hope to be able to use my Art knowledge and background to help create a really fun and creative project for my students that also integrates with the real science and math that my team members are bringing to the project.

Ultimately, by the end of the project, my team members and I will create a unit that incorporates the entire process of gathering data from data collection and observation to data analysis and visualization. Combining all of our teams subject areas Science, Math, and Art to create lessons that allow students to think like Scientists, Mathematicians, and Artists, instead of just following along with a textbook recipe. That thought process is what we believe to be the heart of all of the great citizen science projects. If this project goes well it would be awesome to see it become scale-able and adaptable to the needs of any future citizen science projects.

To learn more about our externship, follow this blog, the blogs of #TeamJaws members Nate Bourne and Brittany Argall and @SDteamjaws on twitter.