I found the relationship between the researchers of Cornell Lab of Ornithology  and the citizens in Project FeederWatch very interesting. The results of surveys showed that the majority of those who participated felt they learned more about birds than what they knew before, including specific aspects such as species diversity. The participants also proved the scientists’ hypotheses wrong on several occasions. This goes to show that if you empower people to contribute to science research and data collection, and to not be scared of science, they can be of great value. If those scientists alone tried to survey the whole area, they might have missed important information or might have lacked the necessary resources to cover such a wide area.

Another interesting concept I learned from this chapter is the “culture of science”. I was surprised to find out science is such a social and collaborative field.  Each field has its own unique approaches, tools, and views. The FeederWatch project served as a good example of how scientists could try to assimilate people into this culture of science and resolving the prejudices and stigmas people have of science due to popular culture and media. This ties in with the last piece we had to read, science is more than what is learned in the classroom, and it is more than what is done in the lab. This out of school/academia experience introduced the “culture of science” to layman and the results showed that it is entirely possible for people unfamiliar with science to take up habits and lessons from science.

I think the “Strands of Informal Science Learning”  are very important to understand for anyone who wants to teach science informally or structure something for a layman audience. I have personally experienced several of these strands at public areas I have visited such as Museums and Aquariums. Even though science is multi-faceted, the “Strands” part of the name implies that they are all part of one larger whole. Personally, I feel strands 1 and 6 to be the most important, strand 6 depending on the strands before it.  Strand 1 is “Sparking Interest and Excitement” and strand 6 is “Identifying with the science enterprise”. Strand 1 is important to get people to create a spark of interest which keeps them going through the other strands. However despite all this progress, they cannot progress further than citizen-scientists if they do not identify as a scientists and use that identity to advance and find their own place in the science world.