April’s Citizen Science Series: final thoughts
By Travis West, Extension Educator, 4-H Youth Development, Vinton County
This month we’ve highlighted dozens of science challenges, teaching resources, and science projects, events, and learning opportunities to connect your hobbies, interests, and curiosities to hands-on activities or to a citizen science project!
April’s Citizen Science Series: What’s Citizen Science Anyways?
Simple, Authentic, and Impactful
Citizen Science is engaging adults and children in advancing science, technology, and innovation on the local, state, and national levels. According to scistarter.org, there are four common features to a citizen science opportunity, they’re:
- Open to everyone that has an interest
- Use a standard process and protocol for collect data so data sets can be easily compiled
- Data helps real scientists develop real conclusions
- Scientists and volunteers are working together to share data with the public
Photo source: https://www.wxxi.org/education/citizenscience/get-involved-citizen-science-projects
Citizen science experiences are flexible, some take a few minutes, some a couple of months, others longer, so find the right science opportunity that fits your schedule. The fields that citizen science advances are diverse as well, such as ecology, astronomy, medicine, computer science, statistics, psychology, genetics, engineering, and many more.
Citizen science (also known as community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, or volunteer monitoring) is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur scientists. Citizen science is sometimes described as “public participation in scientific research,” participatory monitoring, and participatory action research whose outcomes are often advancements in scientific research by improving the scientific community capacity, as well as increasing the public’s understanding of science.
TAKE ACTION TODAY: Explore the “ISeeChange” project in SciStarter.com to see how 5 minutes a week can help document our changing climate here on Earth.
Resources
The Field Guide to Citizen Science
National Geographics Citizen Science Projects
Anecdata Citizen Science Platform
Society for Science, Research at Home: Citizen Science
Peer-reviewed by: Christy Millhouse, OSU Extension Educator, 4-H Youth Development, Preble County, and Meghan Thoreau, OSU Extension Educator, Community Development & STEM, Pickaway County.
