Orchids and Lab Rats

May 21, 2015 chrislintott Leave a comment

Orchid Observers, the latest Zooniverse project, is perhaps at first glance a project like all the others. If you visit the site, you’ll be asked to sort through records of these amazing and beguiling plants, drawn from the collections of the Natural History Museum and from images provided by orchid fans from across the country. There’s a scientific goal, related to identifying how orchid flowering times are changing across the UK, a potential indicator of the effects of climate change, and we will of course be publishing our results in scientific journals.

Yet the project is, we hope, also a pointer to one way of creating a richer experience for Zooniverse volunteers. While other projects, such as iNaturalist, have made great efforts in mobilizing volunteers to carry out data collection, this is the first time we’ve combined that sort of effort with ‘traditional’ Zooniverse data analysis. We hope that those in a position to contribute images of their own will also take part in the online phase of the project, both as classifiers but also sharing their expertise online – if you’re interested, there’s an article in the most recent BSBI News that team member Kath Castillo wrote to encourage that magazine’s audience to get involved in both phases of the project.

BSBI News – published by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, and not as far as I know available online – is a common place for the environmental and naturalist communities to advertise citizen science projects in this way, and so it also serves as a place where people talk about citizen science. The same edition that contains Kath’s article also includes a piece by Kew research associate Richard Bateman chewing over the thorny issue of funding distributed networks of volunteers to participate (and indeed, to coordinate) projects like these. He alludes to the ConSciCom project in which we’re partners, and which has funded the development of both Orchid Observers and another Zooniverse project, Science Gossip, suggesting that we view volunteers as either a freely available source of expertise or, worse, as ‘laboratory rats’.

Neither rings true to me. While the work that gets done in and around Zooniverse projects couldn’t happen without the vast number of hours contributed by volunteers, we’re very conscious of the need to go beyond just passively accepting clicks. We view our volunteers as our collaborators – that’s why they appear on author lists for papers, and why when you take part in a Zooniverse project, then we should take on the responsibility of communicating the results back to you in a form that’s actually useful. The collaboration with the historians in ConSciCom, who study the 19th century – a time when the division between ‘professional’ and ‘citizen’ scientist was much less clear – has been hugely useful in helping us think this through (see, for example, Sally Frampton’s discussion of correspondence in the medical journals of the period). Similarly, it’s been great to work with the Natural History Museum who have a long and distinguished history in working with all sorts of naturalist groups. We’ve been working hard on directly involving volunteers in more than mere clickwork too, and ironically enough, the kind of collaboration with volunteer experts we hope to foster in Orchid Observers is part of the solution.

I hope you enjoy the new project – and as ever, comments and thoughts on how we can improve are welcome, either here or via the project’s own discussion space.

Chris

PS This debate is slightly different, but it reminds me of the discussions we’ve had over the years about whether ‘citizen’ science is actually science, or just mere clickwork. Here are some replies from 2010 and from 2013.

News

Disaster Response in Nepal and The Zooniverse

May 13, 2015 Brooke Simmons 2 Comments

Very soon after the recent magnitude-7.8 earthquake in Nepal, we were contacted by multiple groups involved in directly responding with aid and rescue teams, asking if we could assist in the efforts getting underway to crowdsource the mapping of the region. One of those groups was Rescue Global, an independent reconnaissance charity that works across multiple areas of disaster risk reduction and response. Rescue Global also works with our collaborators in machine learning here at Oxford, combining human and computer inputs for disaster response in a project called Orchid. And they asked us to help them pinpoint the areas with the most urgent unfulfilled need for aid.

And so we sprang into action. The satellite company Planet Labs generously shared all its available data on Nepal with us. The resolution of Planet Labs’ imagery – about 5 metres per pixel – is perfect for rapid examination of large ground areas while showing enough detail to easily spot the signs of cities, farms and other settlements. After discussions with Rescue Global we decided to focus on the area surrounding Kathmandu, with a bias westward toward the quake epicentre, as much of this area is heavily populated but we knew many other, complementary efforts were focusing on the capital itself. We sliced about 13,000 km² of land imagery into classifiable tiles, and created a new project using brand new Zooniverse software (coming very very soon!) that allows rapid project creation.

Screen Shot of the humanitarian project run by The Zooniverse for Orchid and Rescue Global — Once we had prepared the satellite images, we created the project in less than a day. Users were asked to indicate the strength of evidence of settlements in the area, and then how much of the image was classifiable.

We also realised that if we combined our work with the results of some of the aforementioned complementary efforts, we needn’t wait for the clouds to part so that we could get post-quake images. For example, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is doing brilliant work providing exquisitely detailed maps for use in the relief efforts. But here’s the thing: Nepal is pretty big (larger than England). And accurate, detailed maps take time. So in the days immediately following the earthquake, our area of focus – which we already knew had been severely affected – hadn’t been fully covered by HOT yet. And by comparing rapid, broad classifications of a relatively large area of focus with the detailed maps of smaller areas provided by HOT efforts, we could still make very confident predictions about where aid would most be needed even with just pre-quake images.

Because our images were in the sweet spot of area coverage and resolution, we were able to classify the entire image set in just a couple of days with the combined effort of only about 25 people, comprising students and staff members from Oxford and Rescue Global staff. For each image, we asked each person about any visible settlements and about how “classifiable” the image was (sometimes there are clouds or artefacts).

After the classifications were collected, the machine learning team applied a Bayesian classifier combination code that we first used in the Zooniverse on the Galaxy Zoo: Supernova project. After comparing these results with the latest maps from the HOT team, we saw two towns that were outside the areas currently covered by other crisis mapping, but that our classifiers had marked as high priority.

map and satellite of 2 towns, 1 of which our classifications found quickly despite it not being mapped in detail. — Maps from OpenStreetMap (left) and satellite images from Planet Labs (right) for 2 regions in Nepal. The top area shows the Kathmandu Airport (already well mapped by other efforts) and the bottom shows a town southwest of Kathmandu that, at the time of Rescue Global’s request to us, had not yet been mapped.

We passed this on to Rescue Global, who have added it to the other information they have about where aid is urgently needed in Nepal. The relief efforts are now in a phase of recovery, cleanup, and ensuring the survivors have the basic necessities they need to carry on, like clean water and food. Now they are coping with the damage from the second earthquake too.

Those on the ground are still busy providing day-to-day aid, so it’s early days yet to properly characterise what impact we may have had, but the initial feedback has been very good. We will be analysing this project in the days and weeks to come to understand how we can respond even more rapidly and accurately next time. That likely includes much larger-scale projects where we will be calling on our volunteers to help with classification efforts. We believe the Zooniverse, Planet Labs, and partners like Rescue Global and Orchid (and QCRI, our partner on other in-the-works humanitarian projects) can make a unique and complementary contribution to the humanitarian and crisis relief sphere. We will keep you posted on the results of our Nepal efforts and those of other, future crises.

PS: This activity was carried out under a programme of, and funded by, the European Space Agency; we would also like to acknowledge our funders for the current Zooniverse platform as a whole, principally our Google Global Impact award and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. And, to our team of developers who worked so hard to make this happen: you rock.

Header image adapted from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Education

Floating Forests: Teaching Young Children About Kelp

April 29, 2015 Kelly 2 Comments

Today’s blog post comes from Fran Wilson, a second grade teacher at Madeira Elementary School. Fran strives to promote an interest in science in her classroom and help students discover that not all scientists work in labs wearing white lab coats and safety goggles. She seeks meaningful opportunities for her students to participate in citizen scientist work to be responsible citizens, inspire future careers in science, and to connect science concepts to the real world.

This fall I decided to implement Zooniverse’s Floating Forests in my second grade classroom. As soon as I read the description of the project, I knew it was perfect for addressing both my state science and social studies standards dealing with interactions within habitats – living things impact the environment in which they live and the environment can also impact living things. The best part was that my students would be able to engage in meaningful work to acquire these concepts. I like to incorporate project-based learning whenever I can to allow my students to assume ownership of their learning and Floating Forests was no exception. My first challenge was determining how to introduce my students to the project when I didn’t even live anywhere close to an ocean.

Introducing the Problem by Integrating Curriculum

Sea otters are very cute! I decided to use second graders’ love for animals as the entry to the study of kelp. I believe that children learn efficiently when curriculum is integrated across content areas so I made a plan. I selected the book Sea Otters by Suzi Eszterhas. The text tells how a mother sea otter cares for her growing pup. The book’s full page color photos with just the right amount of text on each page made this an ideal book. I chose to begin with a language arts lesson. I projected the book onto my Smartboard and modeled a lesson on determining the main idea and details using a page of the text. Sea Otters does not contain subtitles so I told my students that determining the main idea for a page of text was like creating the subtitle to accompany a portion of text. My students eagerly participated in guided practice of this skill while oohing and aahing at the photos of the sea otters and becoming increasingly more intrigued with the information presented in the book.

By the time we finished reading the book, the children had seen the word kelp in the text and noticed the sea otters lounging on top of the ocean in a bed of kelp. It was the perfect time for me to pose some questions: What exactly is kelp? and Why is it important to the sea otter? My naturally curious students shared their thoughts and the interest in the sea otter and kelp escalated.

Shared Research

How can we learn about the sea otter and kelp? That was the next question I posed after the groundwork was laid for engaging my students in collaborative research. Of course Sophia suggested that we find some more books on sea otters and Jon Miguel added that we should even find some on kelp. Tommaso proposed that we do an internet search to locate information on kelp. This planning step empowered my children with making the decisions about how to learn as well as reinforcing the steps a scientist might undergo while researching. Foreseeing my students’ plan, I had already checked out multiple books on sea otters written at various readability levels along with the few books on kelp that I was able to find.

I selected the book Sea Otters by Laura Marsh to read aloud next to my students. This enabled them to compare the information presented in two books on sea otters. My students listened closely to identify the facts from the text that highlighted the importance of kelp to the sea otters. I started a large chart titled “Sea Otters and Kelp Facts” and modeled how to take notes for our shared research. After reading aloud each of our class notes, the students decided that they had learned some ways in which sea otters depended on kelp but that they still didn’t know much about kelp. At that point we started our internet search.

The Floating Forests webpage provides some great resources, even for use with second graders! Under the education tab of the site, I found a link to a video produced by NOAA to introduce the kelp forest to my students. I was excited that one of my students suggested that they should take notes about kelp in their science journals. (I so love when they take the initiative in their learning!). I discovered several other informative, kid friendly sites with information and videos that we viewed in class and my students continued to take notes. After watching the videos Miki suddenly made the connection and proclaimed, “Hey we eat kelp at my house!” The next day she brought kelp in for everyone in the class to taste.

Websites for Learning about Kelp:

Here is a great introductory site to begin the study of kelp. At this link students can view a video of the kelp habitat created by NOAA. My students were in awe after viewing the video. (Ok I’ll admit I probably let them watch it at least 5 times and each time the students took away new facts!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcbU4bfkDA4
This website provides information about the kelp forest habitat and the animals which live among the kelp. The kids loved taking the quiz at the end after reading the information on the site. http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/eviau/edit557/oceans/norma/oklpfst.htm
The following website supplies lots of information for children to learn more about kelp and its uses. http://aquarium.ucsd.edu/Education/Learning_Resources/Voyager_for_Kids/kelpvoyager/
This video about the disappearing kelp forests in Tasmania prompted my students to think about the need to protect kelp habitats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRfxFZ4ndlg
Here is a link to a Dragonfly episode in which kids dive to explore sea life at different depths of the kelp forest. http://pbskids.org/dragonflytv/show/kelpforest.html

Books for Learning About Sea Otters and Kelp:

Baker, Jeannie. The Hidden Forest. New York: Greenwillow Books, 2000. This story of two children retrieving a fish trap off the eastern coast of Tasmania helps children to see the kelp forest with wonder and appreciation. The author’s note at the end of the book offers insight to this disappearing kelp forest.
Douglas, Lloyd. Kelp. New York: Scholastic, 2005. This simple book presents facts about the kelp forest. It’s perfect for lower level readers.
Eszterhas, Suzi. Sea Otter. New York: Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2013. Readers can learn how a mother sea otter cares for her pup from birth until she is grown up.
Marsh, Laura. Sea Otters. Des Moines, IA: National Geographic Children’s Books, 2014. This informative book contains interesting facts on sea otters and is accompanied by colorful photos.
Slade, Suzanne. What If There Were No Sea Otters?: A Book about the Ocean Ecosystem. North Mankato, MN: Picture Window Books, 2011. This book enables children to see the importance of the sea otter as a “keystone species” in the kelp habitat. It explores the food chain and how the plants and animals of this ecosystem are connected to one another.
Tatham, Betty. Baby Sea Otter. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005. A mother sea otter protects and cares for her pup until it is able to care for itself.
Wu, Norbert. Beneath the Waves: Exploring the Hidden World of the Kelp Forest. San Franciso, CA: Chronicle Books, 1992. Children will be intrigued by the photos of the kelp forest and the animals that live in it while checking out this book. It is a more complex text that children will need guidance to read.

Compiling the Research:

What a list of kelp facts my students generated! After reading and researching about kelp on the internet, I compiled all of their facts onto our classroom chart. I sensed my students’ enthusiasm towards learning and researching but this was confirmed when I opened my email the next morning from a parent.

Sonia's note to her mom. Dear Mom, I missed you when you were at your art class. Today at school we learned about kelp. Did you know kelp is good to eat? And it can help you if you’re ill. And kelp has gas inside of it. The gas is stored inside big round leaves. These leaves are called sword leaves. Kelp is used in toothpaste and shampoo. And so many other things too. Love, Sonia — Sonia’s note to her mom.
Dear Mom,
I missed you when you were at your art class. Today at school we learned about kelp. Did you know kelp is good to eat? And it can help you if you’re ill. And kelp has gas inside of it. The gas is stored inside big round leaves. These leaves are called sword leaves. Kelp is used in toothpaste and shampoo. And so many other things too.
Love,
Sonia

What should we do with all of these facts? That was the next question I posed. Addy had the answer to that and she shared that the facts should be placed into categories. I cut apart all of the kelp facts on the chart and we laid them out in our meeting area. The students quickly sorted the facts into categories. Some of these categories included: What is kelp, Parts of kelp, Kelp forests, Animals that live in kelp, Fish and the kelp forest, Sea otters and kelp, and Scientists and kelp. Next, some children volunteered to work in small groups to write the information into a paragraph with a main idea sentence and details. (Yay! This writing linked back to the initial reading of text for main ideas and key details.). Other children volunteered to illustrate the text with crayons and watercolors. The class research on kelp was almost finished until we started…

Discovering the Ecosystem:

Extending learning across the curriculum is really important to me so while the children were working collaboratively to research kelp through viewing websites and the few books I found, I was meeting with guided reading groups to read and discuss books on ocean life. The children began to think about the ocean as a habitat for many animals and the kelp forest as a very important habitat! After sharing the book What if There Were No Sea Otters?: A Book About the Ocean Ecosystem by Suzanne Slade with a small group of children, Ben announced, “I get it! It’s all connected like a big puzzle!” Kalley latched onto the term “keystone species” highlighted for the sea otters in the text and Sonia explained the relationship between the sea otter and the kelp in the ocean habitat.

All these relationships between the many sea animals in the kelp habitat had the children talking. We needed to solidify their thoughts in a way that we could see them. That’s when the children created a giant model of a kelp habitat. The kelp stalks grew quickly on the large blue poster paper while sea otters were being drawn in a corner of the room, prickly purple and red sea urchins were crafted, fish with fins formed, and kelp labels were created. Of course a new page was added to the children’s book on kelp. Now it was time to publish!

A digital story was created with all of the children’s research. I scanned the children’s writing along with their illustrations. I used Keynote and placed each of the children’s pages of text onto a slide. A small group of children were recorded reading the text upon the slides. The keynote was then exported as an iMovie. We posted the individual pages of the children’s kelp research in the hall for all the other students of our school to enjoy. I submitted the digital story to the Floating Forest blog. Here is the link to view my students’ digital informational book on kelp: http://blog.floatingforests.org — A digital story was created with all of the children’s research. I scanned the children’s writing along with their illustrations. I used Keynote and placed each of the children’s pages of text onto a slide. A small group of children were recorded reading the text upon the slides. The keynote was then exported as an iMovie. We posted the individual pages of the children’s kelp research in the hall for all the other students of our school to enjoy. I submitted the digital story to the Floating Forests blog. Here is the link to view my students’ digital informational book on kelp.

Finding Kelp on Floating Forests

It was finally the right time! My students knew about kelp and understood what an important habitat it was for many sea creatures. Now was the time for sharing Zooniverse’s Floating Forests project with my class. Do you think you’d like to help some scientists with a special project on kelp? I asked. My students were SO excited to become involved. They were even more excited when they realized that they would be looking for kelp on real satellite photos taken from space!

First, I prepared for the children’s “official training.” I connected my computer to my Smartboard and the children viewed the brief tutorial on the Floating Forests website. They quickly learned how to classify the satellite photos and circle the kelp. We circled hundreds of photos together and each time they spotted kelp they became very excited.

Circling kelp on the Floating Forests website continues to be a favorite classroom activity. My students enjoy working in teams of two or three on an iPad taking turns to mark the satellite photos. They often keep a tally of how many times they identified kelp on a photo. I love the discussion it prompts among teams of children circling photos. Through their work, they’ve learned that kelp is found near coastlines. They’re intrigued with the places in the world that kelp might be found.

Participating as citizen scientists with the Floating Forest Project has enabled my students to engage in meaningful work. They feel responsible contributing to important scientific research. My students know that some of the kelp forests are disappearing and they are genuinely concerned. This work has made them more interested in their world and has instilled a need to work collaboratively to care for our earth. My students’ interest in science has been fostered and perhaps some of them will even be inspired to become scientists. I feel like my students have gained so much from this learning opportunity but perhaps it’s what they think that counts most.

Student Responses to Floating Forests

CitizenScience, Science

The Science of Citizen Science: Meetings in San Jose This Week

February 10, 2015 raminskibba 1 Comment

I and other Galaxy Zoo and Zooniverse scientists are looking forward to the Citizen Science Association (CSA) and American Association for the Advancement of Scientists (AAAS) meetings in San Jose, California this week.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we’ve organized an AAAS session that is titled, “Citizen Science from the Zooniverse: Cutting-Edge Research with 1 Million Scientists,” which will take place on Friday afternoon. It fits well with the AAAS’s them this year: “Innovations, Information, and Imaging.” Our excellent line-up includes Laura Whyte (Adler) on Zooniverse, Brooke Simmons (Oxford) on Galaxy Zoo, Alexandra Swanson (U. of Minnesota) on Snapshot Serengeti, Kevin Wood (U. of Washington) on Old Weather, Paul Pharoah (Cambridge) on Cell Slider, and Phil Marshall (Stanford) on Space Warps.

And in other recent Zooniverse news, which you may have heard already, citizen scientists from the Milky Way Project examined infrared images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and found lots of “yellow balls” in our galaxy. It turns out that these are indications of early stages of massive star formation, such that the new stars heat up the dust grains around them. Charles Kerton and Grace Wolf-Chase have published the results in the Astrophysical Journal.

But let’s get back to the AAAS meeting. It looks like many other talks, sessions, and papers presented there involve citizen science too. David Baker (FoldIt) will give plenary lecture on post-evolutionary biology and protein structures on Saturday afternoon. Jennifer Shirk (Cornell), Meg Domroese and others from CSA have a session Sunday morning, in which they will describe ways to utilize citizen science for public engagement. (See also this related session on science communication.) Then in a session Sunday afternoon, people from the European Commission and other institutions will speak about global earth observation systems and citizen scientists tackling urban environmental hazards.

Before all of that, we’re excited to attend the CSA’s pre-conference on Wednesday and Thursday. (See their online program.) Chris Filardi (Director of Pacific Programs, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History) and Amy Robinson (Executive Director of EyeWire, a game to map the neural circuits of the brain) will give the keynote addresses there. For the rest of the meeting, as with the AAAS, there will be parallel sessions.

The first day of the CSA meeting will include: many sessions on education and learning at multiple levels; sessions on diversity, inclusion, and broadening engagement; a session on defining and measuring engagement, participation, and motivations; a session on CO₂ and air quality monitoring; a session on CS in biomedical research;
and sessions on best practices for designing and implementing CS projects, including a talk by Chris Lintott on the Zooniverse and Nicole Gugliucci on CosmoQuest. The second day will bring many more talks and presentations along these and related themes, including one by Julie Feldt about educational interventions in Zooniverse projects and one by Laura Whyte about Chicago Wildlife Watch.

I also just heard that the Commons Lab at the Woodrow Wilson Center is releasing two new reports today, and hardcopies will be available at the CSA meeting. One report is by Muki Haklay (UCL) about “Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective” and the other is by Teresa Scassa & Haewon Chung (U. of Ottawa) about “Typology of Citizen Science Projects from an Intellectual Property Perspective.” Look here for more information.

In any case, we’re looking forward to these meetings, and we’ll keep you updated!

Education

Using Tag Groups to Collect Images on Talk

January 14, 2015 dzmcroy 3 Comments

Hashtags are an important element of how the current generation of Zooniverse’s Talk discussion system* helps to power citizen science. By adding hashtags to the short comments left directly on classification objects, users can help each other (and the science teams) find certain types of objects—for instance, a #leopard on Snapshot Serengeti, #frost on Planet Four, or a #curved-band on Cyclone Center. (As on Twitter, hashtags on Talk are generated using the # symbol.)

One of the ways in which zooites can take advantage of hashtags is by using Talk’s tag group feature. A tag group (also called a “keyword collection”) is a collection that automatically populates with all of the objects that have been given a specific hashtag by a volunteer.

For instance, here is a Galaxy Zoo tag group that populates with all Galaxy Zoo objects that have been tagged #starforming. It will continue to automatically add new images that are given the #starforming tag as well.

There are two ways to tell that this is a tag-group collection, not a manually curated one. The first is that the fourth letter in the last part of the URL (CGZL000056) is an L, for “live” collection. (The other type will have an S as the fourth letter, for “static” collection.) The second is that under “description,” the conditions for the tag group will be displayed: what tags it includes and excludes.

Users can create a tag group in either of two ways: 1. Click the “create a tag group” button that will appear underneath the “tags” on the right side of any object page that has at least one hashtag (and then edit the conditions to their liking), or 2. Add “/#/collections/new/keywords/” to the end of the Talk URL; for instance, talk.planktonportal.org/#/collections/new/keywords/

At this point, there is no way to create a collection that includes, say, on Operation War Diary, #casualty or #sniper—only objects that have #casualty and #sniper. You can, however, exclude certain tags: e.g., all #casualty objects not also tagged #sniper, or #casualty and #sniper but no #horses.

Also, please note that, like all collections, these tag groups are currently capped at 500 total visible images.

It is likely that the next generation of Talk (currently being built) will feature a more refined method of curating collections from hashtags, as well as a more effective search functionality. For now, however, zooites should keep the tag group feature in mind… especially as it will be a critical feature of an upcoming project!

—

* As of January 2015, the Zooniverse projects using the most recent generation of Talk are: Galaxy Zoo, Planet Hunters, Operation War Diary, Milky Way Project, Snapshot Serengeti, Planet Four, Galaxy Zoo Radio, Asteroid Zoo, Disk Detective, Sunspotter, Cyclone Center, Plankton Portal, Notes from Nature, Condor Watch, Floating Forests, Penguin Watch, Worm Watch Lab, Higgs Hunters, and Chicago Wildlife Watch.

Education, Fun, News

Happy Halloween! Going Batty for Citizen Science

October 31, 2014 The Zooniverse Leave a comment

Sadly there don’t seem to be any scientifically valid citizen science projects about ghosts, poltergeists, hobgoblins, or werewolves. There are, however plenty about that Halloween staple – the bat.

Bats get a bum wrap as blood sucking pests. Nothing could further from the truth! Bats are incredibly helpful to us humans because they are natural pollinators and pest controllers, but they are also an indicator species. Indicator species are plants and animals that can be studied to give a snapshot of an ecosystem’s environmental health.

Here are a few ways that you as a citizen scientist can get involved with learning more about these amazing animals.

Bat Detective – Zooniverse’s own bat project. Bat calls are recorded by data collection citizen scientists and then uploaded on to the Bat Detective website. Zooniverse volunteers classify the calls to give scientists a better idea about the distribution of these animals in Europe.

Alaska Bat Monitoring Program – Did you know that Alaska is home to five species of bats? If you live in Alaska you can help the Alaska Department of Fish and Game collect learn more by making and sending in your observations of bats!

iBats (Indicator Bats Program) – This international effort recruits volunteers to record bat calls all around the world. iBats is collaboration between the Zoological Society of London and the Bat Conservation Trust.

Know of other bat-related citizen science projects? Please share them as a comment below!

News

Introducing Darren McRoy – Zooniverse Community Builder!

October 16, 2014 chrislintott 2 Comments

Back in August I wrote about our search for someone we were calling a ‘community builder,’ which I said was ‘the most important job in the Zooniverse.’ The position was created because of the rapid expansion of the project, and the plans we have for the next year or two, which will mean we may be able to create hundreds or thousands of new projects. If the Zooniverse isn’t constrained by the slow process of project-by-project development, then we need to rethink how we choose what is hosted on our platform, what gets promoted—and how we talk about such things. We need, in fact, to try and build a broader Zooniverse community, capable of taking the choice of projects out of our hands. At the same time, we want the tools we use to engage with this community to let everyone have a say, from new classifiers on a single project to those who roam freely across all of our Talk discussion boards.

As many of you will have already discovered, we’ve found someone we can help us with this process — Darren McRoy. Darren is a 2010 graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He has worked as a reporter and editor and is an experienced writer and communicator with a strong focus on developing online communities and strategic digital content. One of his first projects will be gathering and compiling the feedback that will inform the upcoming rebuild of the Talk discussion system. He will be a regular presence on the forums, responding to users’ comments and concerns and seeking opportunities to spur additional conversation. He will also be contributing some written content for Zooniverse projects, blogs, websites, etc. when needed, and giving feedback to the development team.

You should see quite a lot of Darren, and we’d like to encourage you to talk to him if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or other feedback about the Zooniverse community. In particular, right now he is seeking feedback about how Talk can be improved to better serve both the science goals and the growing community of contributors and volunteers.

Darren can be reached via email at darren@zooniverse.org or DZM on Talk. Please feel free to contact him — he is looking forward to working with all of you!

Chris

Fun, News

We Need Us: Online Art, Powered by the Zooniverse

October 9, 2014 ttfnrob 1 Comment

The Zooniverse is the subject of a new artwork co-commissioned by the Open Data Institute (ODI) and The Space (a website for artists and audiences around the world to create and explore digital art). We Need Us is a ‘living’ dynamic artwork, powered by your activity on the Zooniverse, driven by the thriving mass of participation across various Zooniverse sites. You can learn more about it at www.thespace.org/weneedus

We Need Us has been created by artist Julie Freeman. She takes anonymised information from your clicks, counting the number of volunteers active on various Zooniverse projects, and classifications that you all create, every minute. She stores this in a new database as sets of values, while also recording the frequency of activity over an hour, a day, and a month. These sets of values create rhythms that are translated into moving shapes, and play different sounds.

The result is a set of living artworks – one for each of 10 Zooniverse projects – and more are on the way! The live data ensures constant change to the visual and sonic composition. The sounds are processed and manipulated just like the data.

While many researchers have tried to analyse and understand the Zooniverse, We Need Us will be the first time someone has tackled the idea from the perspective of art. The Zooniverse community is an engine of discovery and a force unlike any other. We Need Us highlights its rhythms and patterns, showing how diverse and vibrant Zooniverse citizen scientists really are.

You can run the artwork in your web browser by visiting http://www.weneedus.org

News

Do you have what it takes to be a Zoomanities Developer?

September 10, 2014 Snakeweight Leave a comment

The Zooniverse team is looking to recruit a Javascript/front-end developer as part of a joint project between Zooniverse, based in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, and Tate Britain (London).

Building on the success of high-profile research crowdsourcing projects such as Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org), Planet Hunters (www.planethunters.org), Operation War Diary (www.operationwardiary.org/) and the rest of the Zooniverse.org platform, the successful candidate will lead the development of a ‘citizen art history’ project, working closely with a team from Tate and Zooniverse. As the lead front-end developer for the project you would have a background in excellent interface design and an understanding of user behaviour.

This is an exciting opportunity for a talented developer to work on a high-visibility project. This is a full-time position for 12 months (including benefits). Strong HTML/CSS/JavaScript skills are required including experience of working with third party REST APIs and modern JavaScript MVC frameworks like Backbone. A good understanding of user interface design is also a must. A background in developing highly-usable interfaces for web applications and experience of working with a modern web framework such as Ruby on Rails would be an advantage.

The application and further details can be found here.

Education

Adler Teens Working in Citizen Science

September 10, 2014 julieannzoo Leave a comment

Today’s guest post comes from Sarah Xu and Thomas Janopoulos about their experience as our Citizen Science interns at the Adler Planetarium as part of the Teen Intern Program.

Sarah Xu is currently a senior attending Air Force Academy High School. She has a wide range of interests that change all the time, but computer science has been an interest ever since she was introduced to it in 7th grade. She also is really into Biology, but the Adler Planetarium has recently sparked interests in Astronomy.

Thomas (Tommy) Janopoulos is a Sophomore at Jones College Preparatory High School. He aspires to be an aerospace engineer, focusing on the mechanical engineering aspects of the field. He has a large interest in using the autodesk inventor program, a 3D modeling program to recreate objects virtually.

How did you become a Teen Intern at Adler Planetarium?

Tommy: I learned about the Adler teen internship from my sister, who was a long time volunteer at the Adler. She suggested that I apply to their upcoming internship. She explained that I already know some of the staff from the Web Making for Civic Hacking program, which was a program where we created websites about teen issues to present to problem solvers interested in finding solutions to our issues, we did earlier in the year and having a familiarity with the staff would make the transition into a work environment easier. Also the fact that the Adler is a space science museum would be great for me considering I want to go into aerospace engineering as a profession. So I decided to apply to the internship and now I am in the Citizen Science intern position creating an activity on a Zooniverse project about urban wildlife in Chicago.

Sarah: How I got my internship has a lot to do with my school. Air Force Academy High School has a partnership with Adler. Freshmen year, we had several field trips where we did various activities around the Adler. Many of the students at my school get involve with the Adler. I was brought into the a teen program, Youth Leadership Council (YLC), my sophomore year by one of the volunteers who attended my school. Youth Leadership Council is an after school program where teens plan workshops for civic hack day, a day where people come to offer solutions for any problems that are presented. There I got to know Nathalie Rayter, who is in charge of the Adler teen programs and internship. By talking to her, I received a lot of opportunities to be part of the planetarium. Junior year, I was a member of YLC and a volunteer telescope facilitator. I just kept coming back to Adler through many different programs. This summer I was looking for something to do because I previously interned at an investment firm, but didn’t really enjoyed it much. I was trying to find an internship that’ll provide a different experience. My classmates and teachers along with Nathalie told me to go for the Adler internship. I applied and got the position as a Citizen Science Intern!

As a citizen science intern, I learned a lot of what the Zooniverse does. Zooniverse is a group of people who work on websites for citizen science. On my first day, I was introduced to two projects. One of them is finished while the other one is still being worked on, but will launch September 10th. Tommy, my peer, and I chose to work with the one that is still being worked on. The reason for that is it takes place in Chicago and it would be a bit easier to have the participants we meet at events around Chicago connect to it. Our project with our department is to design an interactive activity that will spread the word of this citizen science project and also citizen science itself. We designed our activity for mainly museum visitors, such as families and younger kids.

What does being a Teen Intern entail?

A teenager as an intern… the title says it all! A bunch of teenagers working together sounds like a lot of fun. For the most part it is, but it also requires many skills to become one. As teen interns at the Adler Planetarium, we have several projects going on. Every intern is assigned to a department with a supervisor who will give you projects to accomplish. On top of that, every teen is required to work on a personal project that we have to pick from a list. Every teen has to make a project to be showed off at the Community Bash which is a party to display what we have done over the summer. We also have to do our daily jobs which can consist of various tasks such as making an activity to being on the floor doing an activity. Now it might not be something that is interesting to you, but having an open mind is very important. You never know until you actually follow through with the project and that is from personal experience! With all these projects happening all within the same 8 weeks, we have to be very organized and on top of our schedule in order to finish them in time. One badly organized and managed day will set everything behind! But incase that does happen, communication and diligence were the key things that helped put us back on track. It is imperative to communicate with our supervisors and other peers so that we can collaborate to get our work done. This internship is not about working alone at all. 99% of the time we did activities and projects with each other. You must be able to work with others because that will really help you succeed in this internship. There is just one last thing you need… Enthusiasm! You will be interacting with lots of visitors and your peers. If you do not have a positive attitude everything else you need to succeed in this internship will not be able to flow because no one wants to work with someone that does not want to be there.

How did you choose what to work on and what did you need to learn to do the work?

When we walked into Zooniverse, Julie, our supervisor, gave us a run through of what citizen science is and what kind of work they do in the office. Then she told us about the two newest biology projects: Condor Watch and a project looking at urban wildlife in Chicago (now with a name, Chicago Wildlife Watch). Condor Watch is up and running, while the other project launches September 10th. Fortunately with the launch date near, they had a demo site we were able to explore to get a feel of what it is. So, we played around with the projects to see what they’re really about. We were given the option to either work together on one or separately on either. Tommy said he liked the animal conservation one because it takes place in Chicago and I agreed. We figured it was easier to introduce the activity and connect it with most of the museum visitors because we’re in Chicago. It’s also a good way for Chicagoans to be more aware of what’s truly around them in this amazing city. It is not just buildings and artifacts; we also have nature that could put people in awe as well.

Chicago Wildlife Watch is a collaboration between the Urban Wildlife Institute at Lincoln Park Zoo partnered with Zooniverse to create a project that will help with animal conservation in Chicago. Camera traps are set up all around Chicago to gather images of what kind of animals live here, their behavior, and how they interact in the urban setting. So we came up with an activity that will not only help promote the project, but also convey the message of nature being everywhere to the public. We designed this activity with museum visitors in mind, meaning it is aimed towards younger kids and families. We use animal cards containing the picture and some factoids of the animals along with a big image of a basic background with a house, park, tree, underground, and water. During the activity, depending on the age group, we give the physical description of the animal and have the kids guess it, whereas with little kids, we would show them the picture and have them guess that way. If they guessed it right, we would hand them the card and have them stick it up to where they think the animal lives. Even though we live in the urban Chicago, we’re still part of nature. Along with that, we hope that participants will have an idea of what citizen science is and what exactly is Zooniverse. A more detailed description and run through will be up on Zooteach when the project launches on September 10th!

After we chose what project we wanted to make an activity around, we had to first learn what concepts we would need to cover, so we went onto the demo site to learn more about the project. We had to researched what conservation is and how it applies to the project so we could have a better understanding on what points we wanted to get across for our participants. Looking at the website and the background information given wasn’t enough. We had a meeting with one of the driving forces of the project, Seth, and one of the lead members of the Lincoln Park Zoo and its Urban Wildlife Institute on what he would like people to take away from our activity. He said, “I want people to know that nature is everywhere”. That gave us a way to go on our activity. It was hard to come up with an activity to do. We tried to google some classroom activities that teachers do for animal conservation. After a few days of research and talking to our supervisor, we took a whole morning to just brainstorm outreach activity ideas. Our supervisor gave us an activity idea earlier that week on how they had classrooms work to classify images of animals and put them into the according bin or bag. So then we took that idea and try to add on to it to fit into our urban wildlife activity. We thought we could have people classify the animals of Chicago. Then we came up with an idea of having our participants try to guess what animals live in Chicago since the project looks at Chicago’s urban wildlife. We thought this activity would hit our learning goal of understanding what nature is and that it is all around us, even in the city. So we presented this idea to our supervisor and then ran with it. We typed up our concept and showed it to peers and supervisors and were constantly updating and adjusting to develop the best activity possible. Now time to test it out!

Our visit to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum helped us to a realize what age group we really aim for. At the Nature Museum, there was mostly little kids who are around 3 or 4 years old excluding summer camps. We weren’t able to test it with kids that young because there is a limited amount of knowledge as to what the kids know about urban wildlife. They do know the very basic animals, but it was hard to carry out our whole activity because our activity contains questions that are at elementary school level. However, there were adults that were interested in what we do and often they are parents of little kids. With the adults, we found out that we just have to describe what citizen science is, what the Zooniverse does, and the project that they’re currently working on. We would proceed to do the end part of our activity which is to show them the demo site of Chicago Wildlife Watch. They would try out the demo site and because it only has a limited amount of pictures, we would try to direct them to try out our other projects. Sometimes Snapshot Serengeti would be used to show a better demonstration of what the fully functional website of the project would look like. At the end of the talk, either one of us would give them a postcard to encourage the visitors to go on Zooniverse.org to try out the projects on there. Through testing it on the floor at Adler, we noticed that it is difficult to draw people in. Creativity really helps with floor activities. People are usually more drawn into something “cool”.

What were the challenges with your project?

Sarah: After we designed the activity, we had to test it out on the floor. That was the second most challenging part of the whole project. The first was having to come up with an activity that’s will get people involved and convey the message we want. I’ve always struggled with public speaking. It was hard for me to go up to the visitors and ask them to help us test run the activity. However, I got past the awkward stage after having to interact with visitors on so many different occasions.

Tommy: Creating this activity has been so much fun and enjoyable but like any other job it had its challenges. My biggest challenge was taking a Citizen Science project and creating a fun interactive activity that educates people about urban wildlife and how they can contribute to science. When you get this job of creating an activity you think creating an activity is easy but having to consider how people learn, how not to bore young kids, how to get people to stop and participate, and how to hit all of your objectives you set becomes a massive task. With a lot of hard work and the help of my peer Sarah, we researched and brainstormed and found a way to take all of these aspects into one activity which is now “What Lives With Us.”

What do you feel you have gained from being a Teen Intern this summer?

Sarah: Through this internship, I had to talk to visitors a lot, so communications and public speaking are things that I got away from it. My ways of starting a conversation and demonstrating things to the public has improved. Aside from that, I was also able to learn what Zooniverse does, what citizen science is, and about Chicago’s wildlife. More importantly, I’ve gained friendships with other teens and professional relationships with the staff members that will only benefit me. It’s great to be able to have this experience of interning at a museum. This summer has been awesome thanks to the Adler, and I hope all the other teens and supervisors had as much fun as I did!

Tommy: This internship has given me so much its hard to put it into one sentence but the one thing I can say is that this job is incomparable to any other opportunity for someone my age. This gives teenagers the opportunity to gain work experience and actual know what its like to be in a work environment while learning new things everyday as if we are in an outside school program. This job showed me how to teach others my knowledge by using simple techniques such as outreach activities to make people understand simple concepts also just teaching me what is and how to create an outreach program. I have learned all the steps educators take in creating lesson plans and understanding how the lesson benefits the participant so they walk away with a skill or knowledge. Now I can identify what it takes to teach others. This internship has also provided me with friendships and relationships that I would never had made without it. I have developed peer friendships by working and hanging out with each other on a daily basis. I have gained relationships with my supervisors, not just the worker to supervisor relationship but friendship as well. We are able to talk with each other not just about work, which has created a fun workplace. Finally this internship has given me connections that can benefit me for years to come in whatever field I decide to pursue. I feel it has given me everything it had to offer and it exceeded expectations in how amazing an experience this has been I gave the Adler my all and I hope I was able to return the favor.