In this activity, students learn about a method for surveying wild populations of penguins, and have the opportunity to try out the method by counting colonies of stuffed penguins using clickers. Students learn about why surveying wild animal populations is important for scientific research and the definition of a "population estimate". A major goal of scientific research is to be accurate and reproducible. Thus, each student counts an individual colony multiple times to produce as accurate of an estimate as possible, accounting for any possible errors they’ve made or penguins they didn’t see the first time around.
To initiate the activity, teachers/volunteers will set up “penguins colonies” – a.k.a., colonies of stuffed animals – and count how many penguins are in each colony to get an accurate total.
Then, students use a clicker to count the number of penguins they see in each colony. They repeat the counts 3 times for each colony and select the best estimate of the total number of penguins for each colony (usually as a group activity). Students then add up the best estimates from every colony to calculate the total number of penguins they’ve estimated for the population.
This repostitory contains all of the needed items to reproduce this outreach program (minus the stuffed animals).
"Instructions" contains a powerpoint file with the detailed protocol for students to follow. There is also an image of the stuffed animal penguin colonies for reference.
"Materials" contains the data sheets for the students to use to record their estimates.
"Presentation" contains a powerpoint file with context and the importance of surveying penguins, which can be used as an intro to the event.