2021 Life Discovery Conference

Conference Details

We're excited to see you at the 2021 Life Discovery Conference! The Life Discovery - Doing Science Education Conference is a collaboration among: the Ecological Society of America (ESA), the Botanical Society of America (BSA), and the Society for the Study of Evolution. The conference highlights the leading science, curriculum design and implementation and data exploration in biology education for high school and undergraduate students. The theme of this year's conference is Pushing Past Barriers: Ecological Science for All. The theme of this year's conference is Pushing Past Barriers: Ecological Science for All. This theme focuses on ensuring that ecology is relevant to all students in the new decade.

Conference Objectives

• Highlight evidence-based research for 21st century biology education
• Promote the use of digital resources and new technologies for scientific literacy, with attention to underrepresented audiences
• Foster communities of practice and partnerships among scientists and educators
• Promote a culture of publishing in education through the sharing of classroom-friendly resources in LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library
• Inform educators about strategies for promoting careers in organismal and environmental biology

NEON Events

EREN-NEON Flexible Learning Projects – Building skills in field ecology and data science

• Expand your skill set in field ecology and data science, while building a new network of people who want to engage their students in authentic ecological science, whether your students are in-person or remote, or both. In this workshop, you will learn about standardized ecological monitoring across geographic scales through the EREN-NEON Flexible Learning Projects (http://erenweb.org/eren-neon-flexible-learning-projects/). By using free online resources (GoogleEarth, iNaturalist) and inexpensive materials, you will identify and characterize a study site near the conference center and then choose one of the projects related to trees or lichens. Thus, depending on your choice, you would measure local anthropogenic impact, measure tree diameter, and calculate biomass, or characterize lichens and their association to air pollution. You will then compare your field data to geographically relevant reference sites via the NEON Data Portal (https://www.neonscience.org/data), contribute your observations to a shared network of data, and learn about other teaching resources associated with NEON. Cost $25.00
• Meeting time: Thursday, September 30th, 2021, at 1:00 PM MT
• Meeting location: YCMA of Rockies
• Duration of the workshop: 3 hours
• Contact: Rhea Esposito, Curriculum Developer