Monthly Archives: June 2014

Education

Guest Educator Bloggers Wanted

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Are you a classroom teacher or informal educator using Zooniverse or other citizen science projects in your teaching practice? We’d love to hear about how you’re doing it and share it with others!  Whether you’re using Seafloor Explorer with third graders, Radio Galaxy Zoo with adult learners, or Operation War Diary in a history museum.

If you’re interested in sharing how you use citizen science to engage students or other audiences on the Zooniverse Education Blog, please email education@zooniverse.org with a brief description of how you’re doing it.

News, Science

Become a Sunspotter and play Solar ‘Hot-or-Not’

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A few months ago we quietly placed a new project online. Called Sunspotter, it was essentially a game of hot-or-not for sunspot data – and since there were not many images available at the time, we thought it best to just let it be used by the people who noticed it, or who had tried it during the beta test. The results have since been validated, and the site works! In fact there are even preliminary results, which is all very exciting. Loads of new images have now been prepared, so today Sunspotter gets its proper debut. Try it at www.sunspotter.org.

On the site you are shown two images of sunspot groups and asked which is more complex. That might sound odd at first, but really it’s quite easy. The idea behind the science of Sunspotter is summed-up neatly on the Sunspotter blog:

I’m pretty sure you have an idea of which is the more complex: a graduate text on quantum mechanics, or an Italian cookbook? On the other hand, it would not be straight-forward for a computer to make that choice. The same is true with sunspot groups.

Or put another way: like many things in life, you’ll know complexity when you see it. Try it out now: it works on laptops, desktops, tablets and phones and you can keep up to date on Twitter, Facebook, G+, and the project’s own blog.

Screenshot 2014-06-13 19.39.24

Education

Taiwan Teachers Workshop

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Teacher professional development workshops run in conjunction with science meetings offers educators and scientists a unique opportunity to learn from one another.  On Sunday March 2, 2014 the Taiwan Teachers Workshop was held as part of the Citizen Science in Astronomy Workshop  at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Academia Sinica in Taipei.  The Citizen Science in Astronomy Workshop brought together astronomers, data scientists, and web developers together to discuss the challenges of working with large datasets and best practices in utilizing the power of citizen science to work with these datasets.  Recognizing an opportunity to bring Zooniverse project scientists together with area educators,  Meg Schwamb, Stuart Lynn, Lauren Huang and Mei-Yin Chou worked with teachers to introduce concepts of citizen science with special focus on Planet Four and Galaxy Zoo.  Earlier this year these two projects were translated into Traditional Chinese as part of  Zooniverse’s push to translate various projects into as many languages as possible through the efforts of our extensive volunteer community.

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To add to this translation effort, a number of existing Zooniverse educator resources were also translated into Traditional Chinese including Planet Four & Galaxy Zoo lesson plans and Galaxy Zoo teacher and student guides.  You can find the workshop presentations and links to the translated educational materials at  http://taiwan.zooteach.org/.

 Funding for the Taiwan Teachers Workshop was generously provided by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology.