Means, B., Coleman, E., Baisden, K., Haertel, G., Korbak, C., Lewis, A., McGhee, R., Penuel, W. R., & Valdes, K. (1999). GLOBE Year 4 evaluation: Evolving implementation practices. Menlo Park, CA: SRI International.
Introduction
By June 1999, nearly 7,000 schools in 84 countries had participated in Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), an international environmental science research and education program. In the roughly 5 years since the program began training teachers, some 10,000 teachers, 2,000 of them from schools outside the United States, have received intensive training on how to implement the program.
GLOBE students are involved in authentic science investigations, led by GLOBE scientists who have designed the data collection protocols and review and analyze the student data. Since the start of GLOBE data collection on Earth day 1995, GLOBE students have use data entry forms on the Worlds Wide Web to submit their measurements to a central archive, where they are combined with data from other schools.
GLOBE provides a scientific framework and educational resources; it is neither a curriculum nor a fully specified educational intervention. The GLOBE Program provides a set of data collection protocols in four investigation areas: Atmosphere, Hydrology, Soil, and LandCover/Biology. The protocols specify GLOBE’s requirements for data collection, including times when measurements are to be taken, the instruments needed, and procedures to ensure accuracy of data and consistency across study sites.