Have you ever wondered about the biodiversity that can be found around your school, neighborhood, or community? Join AEEA and the National Geographic Society to learn how to conduct a BioBlitz in your community with your students. A BioBlitz is an event that focuses on finding and identifying as many species as possible in a specific area over a short period of time. A BioBlitz can happen in most any geography—urban, rural, or suburban—in as large an area as a national park or small as a schoolyard. It can even focus on plants growing in the cracks in sidewalks and athletic courts.

This workshop will teach you how to organize and conduct a BioBlitz with your students including how to locate, identify, and record organisms using the free iNaturalist.org website and app, or using offline tools and techniques. We will spend time discussing innovative ways to remove or reduce barriers to participation in BioBlitz events, and share success stories from throughout the National Geographic educator network and beyond.

A BioBlitz can be conducted with students in elementary and up, and they are a great opportunity for participants to become explorers, storytellers, and citizen scientists of the natural world around them.