LIFELONG LEARNING: Student to Retiree

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions. The French anthropologist Claude Lévi Strauss said that years ago, and it is a sentiment that GLOBE scientists, teachers and students understand.

GLOBE students' activities help them develop critical thinking skills that will serve them well all their lives long - whether they go on to become scientists - or butchers, bakers or candlestick makers.

Such lifelong learning skills have never been more valuable than in today's - and tomorrow's - world. Experts say most of us will have several different careers and must be open to learning new skills throughout our lives. In addition to specific protocols, GLOBE students of all ages learn:

• to work together in teams, often with students from different cultures
• to see a relationship between their work and the work of scientists and other students
• to see the relationship between their observations and long term patterns taking place at their study sites, their neighborhoods, their regions and around the globe
• to answer questions based on their own measurements and observations, rather than simply from textbooks
• to sometimes question those answers
• to appreciate that some questions don't yet have answers, and
• to use methodologies, analyses and other skills required by many state standards.

"From what I've seen, GLOBE is a perfect example of integrating things that are not necessarily part of the classroom, but that have a direct impact on students," said J. Michael Guthrie, program director at Miami Sunset Senior High School in Miami, FL.

"That can create a lot of awareness in students and set them in the direction of excellence." The skills that GLOBE requires and reinforces will serve participants well no matter what fields they study or career paths they choose. "A lot of people in business, industry and especially those in the technology sector, are looking for employees who are well prepared, people who can work with others, who are good at problem solving, and are used to dealing with questions that don't have answers," said Dr. Ralph Coppola, GLOBE's Chief Educator. "Plus, it's important to have educated citizens in addition to people entering science careers. GLOBE students take their skills wherever they go."

"And GLOBE is not only about lifelong learning," said GLOBE Director Tom Pyke, "but also about lifelong contributions to knowledge of our world."

Through GLOBE, children, teachers and scientists from different cultures - in their own countries and from around the world - work together as they gather, report and analyze data. These students experience the excitement, satisfaction and frustrations of working together, getting along, and communicating well.

For example, using GLOBE protocols as their guide and Internet and satellite technologies as their link, students from Pikeview High School in West Virginia collect field data from Pipestem State Park. GLOBE students from Kingsburg High School in California conduct field experiments and gather data from sites in Yosemite National Park. They also engage in ongoing projects with Utajarven Ylaaste School, in Utajarvi, Finland.

In another example, Spanish language students from Idaho to Pennsylvania are corresponding with GLOBE students in Spanish speaking countries. "GLOBE brings everything into perspective. They're not learning isolated vocabulary words... and I really think they are going to come out with a higher proficiency," said University of Idaho's Teresa Kennedy of her Spanish language students.

Children of all backgrounds, even in the poorest schools, respond to the protocols and learning activities of GLOBE, teachers say. Their learning depends on their own observations and thinking. "By the end of the semester, kids start to believe they are scientists," said Jennifer Burnes of her practice teaching experience in Yakima Valley, WA. "And that's what we wanted."

When students are engaged in their world, as they so often are in GLOBE, they are more likely to retain knowledge. And their lessons often go beyond what is being taught. Science becomes real for them.

GLOBE students gain an understanding of how their neighborhoods compare to other places around the world, how their data contribute to scientific study and even how their study sites, their labs," are part of the world. To them, studies are not just pages in a textbook.

"This is a magic place," said 12 year old Cecilia, an Argentine GLOBE student who worked on a site in Antarctica. "To watch the ways of the penguins and other birds here is to really discover a different world; the great noise of icebergs breaking off, the blend of strange colors at sunrise. This place contains big questions that I can answer in part by myself with my own studies."

As they seek answers, GLOBE students learn to challenge their fellow students, themselves and even their teachers as they learn to depend on their own observations for their conclusions.

Even GLOBE students as young as the second graders in Sandra Ivins's class in West Boylston, MA, use critical thinking. They've have become quite sophisticated in their assessments of clouds, having reported thousands of observations. "The students will really argue about what percentage of what type cloud is in the sky and they make an effort to back up their opinions," Ivins said.

From Second Grader to Senior Citizen

The leap from second graders to senior citizens is not that large in the family that is GLOBE. In an extraordinary display of lifelong learning, a handful of seniors in the United States and in Europe have embraced GLOBE long past their retirement from full time jobs.

For example, as any GLOBE student, Florence Martin learned to read and record measurements from her site instrument shelter. Yet unlike most GLOBE students, she turned 90 on the day Mobile, AL, measured a record high of 105 last summer.

Ms. Martin and her fellow GLOBE participants at three senior institutions in Mobile, AL know very well that neither physical infirmity nor advanced age are obstacles to learning. The seniors maintain GLOBE study sites at two residential facilities, the Allen Memorial Home and the Atria Regency, as well as one at the non residential Mary Abbie Berg Senior Center.

These seniors say they have enjoyed the opportunity to master GLOBE's scientific protocols, to satisfy their curiosity about the environment and to make a contribution. Perhaps most profoundly, Anne Marshall, a certified therapeutic recreation specialist, found that GLOBE participants showed a measurable improvement in psychological well being compared to a control group.

"The GLOBE program helps to achieve the goal of meaningful activity," Marshall said. "One of its most important aspects is that the work is useful to others."

In many ways, these seniors represent the epitome of "lifelong learning." Virginia Hutchinson, 74, for example, is a key GLOBE participant in part due to her computer skills. She didn't try her hand at a computer until two years ago; now she instructs others.

After finishing his protocols for the day, William Pugh, 86, said, "If GLOBE needs more data, they ought to ask more old people to help!"

Senior GLOBE enthusiasts in the Netherlands took an entirely different approach. Ten Dutch seniors recently received training in Bennekom so that they can go into classrooms and help GLOBE teachers and students with their research.

GLOBE Spring Newsletter 2001
Lifelong Learning International Roots Deepen Picture Earth Accurately Hunting Haze	Plants Monitor Climate Rain Gauge Tips What Is Fog? Newsletter Index