Junior Think Like a Citizen Scientist My Way

I’m beginning to get ready for the new troop year and so I’ve been browsing through the available programming that’s out there.  As you probably already know, GSUSA released a slew of new badges and Journeys in July.  So between what they released last summer and this year, I have a lot to go through.   Admittedly the only thing we earned out of the new material last year was the Brownie’s Cabin Camper.  Technically we started on the Cadette Outdoor Journey (made up of the Night Owl, Trailblazing, and Primitive Camper badges) by earning Trailblazing, so I guess that counts too. 

As a side note, the Cadette Outdoor Journey originally featured Trees, Trailblazing, and Primitive Camper which was a newly released badge at the time.  But then it was announced that Trees really should have been Night Owl.  Personally, I think it should have been left as Trees.  Night Owl is really not an outdoor badge.  I mean, it has an owl on it, and there are some outdoor elements in it like a night hike, but Trees is a much better fit.  You know, because trees grow outdoors, and I’m not sure where interviewing someone who works third shift falls into the whole nature thing.  Surely someone didn’t just see the owl on the Night Owl badge and assume it was an outdoorsy type badge.   And I know that you don’t necessarily have to earn the Outdoor Journey badges in a particular order, but they should really list Primitive Camper BEFORE Trailblazing.  You should take a primitive camping trip as a prerequisite to backpacking because you take many of those skills and experiences with you.  But I wouldn’t include both anyway because Primitive Camper’s requirements are too similar to Trailblazing.  What about an Orienteering badge?  There’s more to the outdoors than just camping and hiking, ya know!  If I had to design a Cadette Outdoor Journey out of both current badges and ones of my own imagination (or retired IPAs), I’d pick Orienteering, Advanced Outdoor Cooking, and Primitive Camping.

Back to our newly bridged Juniors!  As I said earlier, I was poring through all of the new stuff that’s out there to see what our options are for this year.  I was overwhelmed.  But then I sat in on a friend’s Junior level webinar and heard that last year’s Think Like a Citizen Scientist Journey is somewhat outdoor based.  I’d like for us to knock out a Journey our first year of Juniors so that we’re not caught in a time crunch like we were with my first go around with Juniors, so I thought I’d check out the TLACS Journey to see if it’s something we could earn this year.

First, I had to look up the term “citizen scientist.”  I had never heard of it before last year.  In case you’re wondering as well, it’s basically scientific research done by amateur scientists.  Sounds great!  So I promptly logged into Volunteer Toolkit since that’s the only place it’s available.  Well, not promptly, because I have to go around my elbow to get to my ear when it comes to logging into VTK (which I document in my VTK videos – and if you’re a glutton for punishment, you’re welcome to watch them).  I pulled up the Junior TLACS Journey and added it to my plan so that I could access the activity plans.

And I stopped.

Maybe it’s just the way my mind works, but with the way it’s laid out in VTK, I had a very hard time trying to wrap my brain around how I would organize this Journey over a number of meetings.  I couldn’t see the overall picture or framework.  Which I’m sure makes no sense, especially since the Journey is pretty much spelled out for you because it tells you what to say word for word (by using the obvious “SAY” notation) and it’s broken up by parts or meetings.   So maybe I just needed to download it and look at it via Adobe Reader instead of paging through VTK.  Unfortunately, you get an error message if you try to download the activity plans in PDF format from VTK,* so I visited a certain rogue council’s website and downloaded the activity plans in PDF format.  There are six files.  Totaling 135 pages.  Yep.  My printer started crying.

If you follow my blog, you know I’m really stingy when it comes to printing things out and I’ve complained before about the lack of printer friendly downloads from GSUSA.  However, I do come up with solutions!  I thought to myself, ain’t no way I’m printing out 135 pages.  I browsed through the files and found that there’s a lot of redundancy, and I’d have to go through each file to figure out what was duplicated.  Maybe I could consolidate it into one file.  Then I thought, “Surely someone else has already done this by now.”  So I visited the GS Gab Facebook group and searched.  Aha!  I found a file where someone had indeed removed the redundant text and saved multiple parts in one file as I hoped.  This person trimmed it down to 32 pages although she didn’t include the last three parts/meetings.  But it was line after line after line of unformatted text (for the most part) because it was a copy & paste of the way it looks in VTK.  It STILL wasn’t what I was looking for.

So I sighed and thought, “I guess I’ll have to do it my way.”  And then My Way started playing in my head.  The Sinatra version, of course.

Long story short (too late), I pulled all of the text from the activity plans and incorporated the Meeting Overviews directly into the Introduction.  I reformatted the Activity Plans to make them easier to read and consolidated them so there wasn’t so much wasted space, plus I changed “SAY” to “Suggested conversation.” Because it sounds better.  And I’m doing it My Way, so there!

I also tacked on the resource PDF files which includes the glossary, Take Action guide, Think/Pair/Share guide, and worksheets.  A list is included in the introduction.

You’re welcome to use this with your troop.  I hope it’s helpful.  It took some work, but I would have spent just as much time (if not more) figuring out what pages to print and not print and organizing them in some form or fashion to prepare for the meeting.  Now it’s all organized, easy to read, and in one file.  It’s still a little long at 39 41 pages, but I don’t plan on printing out the last three parts/meetings.  They just describe how to help the girls choose a Take Action project and how to celebrate it.  I left them in there just in case someone needs ideas.  This is how I do it My Way!

I leave you with this:

Journeys, I’ve had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And rewrote it through without exemption

I planned each paragraph
Each careful step along the VTK
And more, much more than this
I did it my way!

* On the off chance this gets to someone who can fix the download problem, it looks like the PDF files are corrupted.  I tried it in multiple browsers, and other badges & Journeys’ activity plans download fine, so it seems to be specific to the Junior TLACS Journey.

Addendum 8/19/18:  This has been fixed!

Addendum 9/19/18:  I just reformatted the Junior Think Like a Programmer Journey, so feel free to download it if you’re interested.

Addendum 2/19/19:  And here’s the Junior Think Like an Engineer Journey rewrite!

Addendum 9/18/20:  GSUSA has consolidated all levels of the Think Like a Citizen Scientist for download for free!