Next Saturday afternoon, at ScienceOnline2010, the science goddess, the chemspider, and I will be presenting a workshop on getting students involved in citizen science.
In preparation, I'm compiling a set of links to projects that involve students in citizen science. If you know of any good citizen science efforts, please share them in the comments.
Here we go!
Before I start listing links, I am limiting this list to projects that allow both students and citizen scientists to participate. I know of plenty of student projects, where students can isolate phage and annotate their genomes or help annotate bacterial and archea genomes, but outside of approved student groups, no one else is really allowed to participate. So, I consider those to be student projects, but since they're not open to other citizens, I don't think they count as citizen science.
National programs:
Project Budburst: gives both students and non-students a chance to get a first-hand look at climate change.
Their site has great information on botany with wonderful pictures and places to report data.
Nature Mapping: as the Nature Mapping site states: "knowledge is power." Nature mappers are a bit like the e-birders. They record what they see and where they see it.
Nature mapping involves students in identifying and counting diverse species in diverse places. I went to the one of the Nature Mapping training sessions in October. There are Nature mapping projects for all levels of students and an on-line database with data to analyze.
The Nature mapping program that I attended was focused on intertidal creatures, however students are doing all kinds of interesting things in this program. In project CAT, for example, K-12 students are participating in an 8 year study to learn about cougars that reside in the region and their prey.
Washington programs:
The Port Townsend Marine Science Center
PTMSC has several research programs involving volunteers and students.
These include projects on water quality, marine mammals, plastics, invasive species monitoring, and more.
SoundCitizen
This is a non-profit group based at the UW School ofOceanography. Currently, they have a project where students and citizens gather water samples from Puget Sound and the samples are tested for spices and flavoring agents.
WSU beach walkers
Washington State University is quite a long way from the beach, nevertheless, they're a very active citizen science group. I wish there was a chapter in King County since I walk on the beach there quite a bit. They gather data on dead sea birds, algae blooms, intertidal stuff, invasive stuff, plastics, and all sorts of things, and enter the data in on-line databases.
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Just so you know Fabiana Kubke, who will be attending the meeting has a Citizen Science project too.
She blogs at Building blogs of science: http://sciblogs.co.nz/building-blogs-of-science/
The website for her citizen science stuff is: http://popscinz.wordpress.com/
nice! More here: http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/project_finder/ and LOTS more to come here: www.scienceforcitizens.net
See you next week! Looking forward to meeting you.
Darlene
Thanks Darlene!
I'm looking forward to meeting you, too!
Just so you know Fabiana Kubke, who will be attending the meeting has a Citizen Science project too.
She blogs at Building blogs of science: http://sciblogs.co.nz/building-blogs-of-science/
The website for her citizen science stuff is: http://popscinz.wordpress.com/
Do you know of any citizen science related specifically to farming/gsrdening techniques? The field is rich with folklore just dying to be tested...and it would be helpful to really look at the organic/conventional claims at the small scale...since both sides claim they produce higher yields.
Just so you know Fabiana Kubke, who will be attending the meeting has a Citizen Science project too.
She blogs at Building blogs of science: http://sciblogs.co.nz/building-blogs-of-science/
The website for her citizen science stuff is: http://popscinz.wordpress.com/
Thanks Grant!
Tamara: I don't know the answer, but I agree, this would be a great area for public research.
There's also the Museum of Science Firefly Watch, Galaxy Zoo (helping to identify galaxies and super nova), and the U.S. National Phenology Network. And a climate-oriented reporting site - CoCoRaHS for the U.S..
A friend of mine regular blogs about citizen science projects in Florida at http://citizenscienceatcampbayou.blogspot.com/
Consider our wonderful Community Science Institute monitoring water quality in central upstate New York.
http://www.communityscience.org/
A great resource and an interesting project:
http://www.scienceinterviews.org/Home.html
thank you very much for sharings...i really enjoy all of these posts...
I compiled a booklet for a Citizen Science Symposium at Camp Bayou last year. It has a short intro then some sample projects that can be used right from the booklet. It is posted online at http://www.box.net/shared/1kirpgkgu3
See "Citizen Science Central" (www.citizenscience.org)
I might suggest The Open Dinosaur Project, on which I am one of the leads. We're a slightly different vein of project, in that we recruit volunteers for data mining rather than collecting "in the wild." But, it's been pretty fun to see the cross-section of people who have participated so far! Everyone from students to professors to artists to retail workers. . .and several continents represented, too!
I collected some on FriendFeed a few months ago - see if there is anything interesting on that list.
Enjoyed the blog! There are a number of citizen science projects in astronomy your readers may find interesting.
*SETI@Home http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=748
*HiRISE (the People's Telescope) http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/epo/epo.php
*AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers) http://www.aavso.org/observing/
There is so much data and not enough eyes to sort through it all.
Clear skies! Debra
Cornell University's "Citizen Science Central":
Browse the University's database and find projects by topic or use the toolkit to make a new one!
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/citscitoolkit
Thanks Jud, Debra, Bora, Andy, Rick, Peggy, Dolly, Mary Ann, Jason, Soren, and Grant!
Wow this sounds great. Please keep me updated on how it went down! I have a entire list of kids who would love to attend something like this lecture and who are crazy about science!
Carol Cline: The potty training pro
You know that there are tons of people putting together projects similar to this. A friend of mine is trying to find a way to run a Harley-Davidson motorcycle on lawn clippings. Small-scale science is alive and well in the united states.
I am looking for a lake monitoring citizen science project for my water monitoring class in the spring (I want for students to study their lakes on SUP boards!!!) Any ideas?
-K
Hi Ken,
That sounds like a fun project! I do have some ideas and will try to get back to you on this.
Sandra