Dr. Declan McCabe Introduces Macroinvertebrates to Early Childhood Educators and Expands Mobile Device App


Declan McCabe, PhD

Declan McCabe, Ph.D., Professor of Biology at Saint Michael’s College, and Center for Workforce Development and Diversity (CWDD), led a training and round table discussion with Early Childhood Educators on May 6, 2017 at Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vermont.

Approximately 10 educators attended the event, during which time Dr. McCabe organized a roundtable discussion on simple techniques for gathering macroinvertebrates from the Shelburne Farms Pond. Dr. McCabe built a wiki for the Pond and added it to the VT EPSCoR Mobile Device App developed and supported with funding from VT EPSCoR.

Following the discussion, the group went to the onsite pond and applied the techniques to take samples. Participants learned new techniques, equipment ideas, and gained new knowledge of invertebrates. The specimens gathered were entered into a database for the Shelburne Farms Pond for future reference. Many of the bugs found were not part of the mobile app previously, Dr. McCabe explained, “…simply because we rarely sample ponds”. He also provided training on how to add invertebrates to the wiki.

For more information about the MacroInvertebrate Mobile App please visit the links below:

For Android users

For Apple users