Think Like a Citizen Scientist: Virtual Meeting No. 2

We had our second virtual meeting of the year, and continued working on Think Like a Citizen Scientist.   We also played a Bingo game with Leave No Trace to being working on our Eco badges. 

Since the last meeting I distributed Memory Books and when I did so I provided the handouts for this meeting.  I also put them online in case anyone lost them or needed another copy.  You can find them here.

To prepare for the meeting girls were asked to view the SciStarter site and to pick and do a Citizen Science project.  I told the parents that iNaturalist was dead simple and that's the one everyone chose.  The packet had a short report for the girls to do.  With iNaturalist, you download the app and take pictures of living things (or you can upload photos already on your phone or your Google account).  The app grabs your metadata as far as the time and place of the photo.  It asks you to identify what you photographed and offers suggestions.  It asks if the item was wild or cultivated.  You then upload it.  If you can't identify it, chances are someone else will.  Other people or groups can add your photo to their collection.  "Louisiana Biodiversity" grabs my photos.

New Badge Review: STEM Career Exploration for Juniors

According to Badge Explorer,  with this year's new STEM Career Exploration badge for Juniors:

Girls will find out how they can turn what they're interested in and what they care about into a future career. They explore different jobs in STEM, focusing on ones that make a difference for people, animals, and the environment. Then, they create a plan with next steps for how they'll change the world!

1. Explore your interests

2. Discover the possibilities

3. Learn about the day-to-day

4. Brainstorm your next steps

5. Share your goals

When girls earn this badge, they'll know about STEM careers that make the world a better place.

Discover, Connect, Take Action

As anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows, I'm no great fan of Journeys, especially the original ones.  However, one thing I will say they got right is the sequence "Discover, Connect, Take Action"

Last night southwest Louisiana was decimated by Hurricane Laura.  Because we are Americans and because that's what Americans do, I fully expect that people around the country will be trying to help those people in the upcoming weeks, and that is a good thing.  However, if you are one of those people, please discover and connect before you take action. 

DISCOVER

Having lived through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but having not seen more than random pictures of the Lake Charles area, I can tell you that a lot of people's homes were either badly damaged or destroyed.  Businesses, many of which were hurting from the corona virus shutdowns, are now damaged or destroyed.  While insurance will help many rebuild, since the storms of 2005, homeowners' policies have started carrying hurricane deductibles that are substantially higher than the deductibles people choose for other perils. 

New Badge Review: Brownie Automotive Engineering

Right now, I'd say there are two classifications of GSUSA badges--regular badges and "progressive" badges.  The regular badges cover a gamut of topics and are characterized by the format of the materials offered by GSUSA.  For each of the five requirements, the badge insert and VTK offer a choice of three different activities per requirement.  (If you are not aware, VTK changed a lot of its meeting plans during the summer of 2020) The progressive badges deal with STEM topics and the badge inserts are background information on the subject.  The plans in VTK are unified lesson plans where the leader talking points turn something like drawing a quilt block into a coding activity.

This year a new set of progressive badges was released. They are K-5 Automotive Engineering Badges.  The first in the set for Brownies is Automotive Design and it involves designing a work vehicle and then sculpting it out of plastic clay.   The second in the set is Automotive Engineering and it involves designing an emergency vehicle and building it out of junk/craft supplies. The third is Automotive Manufacturing and it involves making vehicles out of craft supplies assembly-line style. This post is about the second badge, Automotive Engineering.

My Virtual Meeting: Think Like a Citizen Scientist

My troop this year is Brownies and Juniors, and like many troops we are beginning the year online.  In planning this meeting I wanted something that all the girls could do together, something at required minimal supplies and preferably something that went toward a Journey.  I have one second year Junior and she/her mother are the type to want to do the Bronze Award.  They were in another troop last year and did not do a Journey, so I wanted to get that done, so she and anyone else who was interested could work on the Bronze Award.

I decided on Think Like a Citizen Scientist simply because it seemed to be the easiest Journey and because I could do the multi-level version with both groups.  I summarized the plans here.  

Before the meeting I posted the VTK handouts with the snails, as well as the map to our Facebook page so parents could print them. I told the parents that if they didn't have access to a printer, to let me know and I'd stick a set in the mail.  One person requested them and she got them.  I asked the girls to cut the snails apart, and, before the meeting to spread them around the room.

Junior Business Jumpstart

 

The current iteration of the Girl Scout program has four pillars:  STEM, entrepreneurship, Life Skills and Outdoors.  This year GSUSA released new entrepreneurship badges.  The Junior badge is called Business Jumpstart.

Requirements:

According to Badge Explorer, Girls will find out how to come up with a business idea that improves their world, learn how to get feedback, and pitch their idea to others.

1. Create a prototype for a product, service, or technology that solves a problem

2. Get feedback

3. Revise your prototype

4. Come up with a pitch

5. Pitch your idea to an audience

When girls earn this badge, they'll have the entrepreneurial skills to come up with an idea that solves a problem, get feedback, improve their idea, and pitch their idea to others.

VTK Has Changed--For the Better

Last year I wrote a post talking about VTK, using the Brownie First Aid badge as an example.  I found plenty of problems with it, but liked the badge activities that I found more practical than some in the badge inserts.  While I could see that scripts could be helpful for new leaders, I found the plans overly wordy and I found it difficult to correlate some of the activities with the badge requirements.

I've been planning meetings for this year and I have gotten the feeling that VTK has changed some, and tonight when I looked at the Brownie First Aid Badge I realized that there had been significant changes to at least this badge plan, and my feeling is, to others as well.  

I wrote extensively about the Snacks Badge last year, including a post comparing the badge insert with VTK. I found that the VTK plans were more focused on teaching nutrition than on teaching cooking, and in fact, had the girls doing very little cooking and seemed to me to carry activities that were more likely to result in trash than in snacks.  I just looked at it, and it too has undergone a significant revision.