All you need for a Soundwalk is yourself. If you would like to take a notebook, or use the Soundwalk Tally sheet for the Club, or use a camera, recording device, smartphone/iPhone, or tablet/iPad to document what you observe, you can share your findings with the Club NIPI and the world of Citizen Scientists connected through iNaturalist.  Or find your own way to communicate with your family and community!

In addition to the Outschool classroom, this class uses:
iNaturalist
iNaturalist
Songsleuth
Kaleidoscope
EchoMeter
Zooniverse
dB X
GoogleMaps

Connecting to the apps and websites below is optional for all participants. The kids I have worked with have been very engaged using iPads to document and get help identifying all the species they encounter on Soundwalks (mushrooms, weeds, birds, and trees!).  They enjoy using smartphones to measure the sound levels (dB) around them, and being able to see the spectrograms, drawn in realtime, on SongSleuth.  If you would like to be able to share our bat recordings, EchoMeter is a free app that will display these Ultrasonic recordings (or you can obtain your own EchoMeter Touch from Wildlife Acoustics and discover the ultrasonic world in your own backyard).   Zooniverse.org uses Citizen Scientists to do all sorts of projects, like classifying galaxies and identifying patterns in storm damage to structures after hurricanes. But all these ways of communicating science are secondary to learning to observe, and listen, to what is around you in your own community.