I am piloting a project for educators: the Square Meter Project is a project to help educators engage students in exploring the concept of species richness. Square Meter Projects consist of observations of each species (not each organism) in a square meter plot which are curated into an iNat project…

My only input is to make sure students are instructed to take quality photos. -A guy who just sorted through 500+ poor quality student bioblitz plant photos which were either out of focus or showed multiple species with no direction as to which to ID.

Agreed that there will need to be a whole section devoted to having students add photos to iNat. I actually think that Seek is the better tool for students to use to conduct their own Square Meter Project survey as the pedagogical value is having students analyze data from iNat rather than contribut…

I would add that being strict about each student making their own independent observation is important. It seems pretty common for students participating in iNat projects to just copy each other’s photos rather than taking their own. Also, getting them to take it seriously too. Often with student…

I really like the idea of analyzing data from a teacher-provided survey dataset- meaning, a 1x1m survey by teacher, just part of the teacher’s own iNat observations and placed into the teacher-owned 1x1m individual project. Then any equity issues with things like camera access/skills are nothing to …

It sounds an ideal situation for setting up an emergence trap for insects.

Something of an aside here, but many years ago Audubon Magazine published a series of articles on certain common habitats (“What Good is a…”). The one on prairies talked about how a prairie, KS Flint Hills, in this case, had more biomass below ground than an old-growth forest has above ground. This …

Project update. The Square Meter Project is part of a three year cycle of professional development topics. I haven’t done much with the SMP since I posted this and probably won’t until we are back to the Life Science theme. I still would love it if folks would create their own square meter projects…

Hi @anneclewis , would you consider collaborating to design this as a citizen science project https://schoolwithoutwall.org/en/build/bug-census

I hope this is not off-topic, but you can deepen the observations of life in almost any square meter by making a Winogradsky column from a soil or mud sample. Microbes will proliferate at different depths and they will show up as bands of color. This may not lend itself to iNaturalist posts, but i…

Square Meter Project

Educators

dlevitis January 26, 2026, 7:25pm 11

I’d be interested to hear how this is going, please. I love the idea but am curious how well the activity holds kids’ attention when they are looking at observations from teachers, rather than doing it themselves.

Topic		Replies	Views
Projects Useful for Education Educators	19	1344	September 6, 2025
How do you use iNaturalist data with students? Educators question	24	3533	February 14, 2026
Creative ways to use iNaturalist Educators education , projects	34	4763	June 4, 2025
Annual school bioblitz with data going back to 2007 Educators	16	1074	March 30, 2024
Developing curriculum for multiple classes from different schools Educators	7	776	June 6, 2022

Square Meter Project

Related topics