Although community service is not a new notion in education, traditionally it has been confined primarily to the high school as an extracurricular activity. When kids engaged in community service activities the activities were add-ons to the curriculum with limited impact on the students. New emphasis on integrating service learning into the curriculum has been a great step forward. Volunteers across the United States collect data on their local amphibian populations by choosing and periodically monitoring a wetland site for calling frogs and toads. One hurdle in understanding changes in animal populations is the ability to track or monitor those populations.
Monitoring is time and labor intensive and researchers are constrained by both time and funding.