Educators look for ways to engage students in authentic tasks that provide relevancy to students. Better yet is when students can engage in an authentic task that benefits a global community. Siena combined together two authentic tasks, a Bioblitz and using iNaturalist. A bioblitz is when citizens and scientists partner to inventory plant and animal species in a specific location for a certain period of time. iNaturalist is a cell phone application that enables citizens to photograph and identify a species with a geotag. The data generated by iNaturalist is collected by the California Academy of Sciences and is available for global scientists researching a species and/or the ecology of an area.

For Siena students and teachers, the Bioblitz was an opportunity to work with experts knowledgeable about a taxonomic group, learn about the biodiversity and natural resources in their local park, be a citizen scientist and get outdoors. After the 90-minute bioblitz, student groups created a presentation of the species they inventoried in the park and presented their findings in a whole school assembly. 

Students not only learned about different species and the habitats of a taxonomic group but also learned from each other about the diverse species that inhabit their backyard park. Engaging Siena students in a Bioblitz embodied the hallmarks of 21st-century learning: experiential, authentic and collaborative.