Google always needs to be hiring the next generation of the brightest and best science and technology students from around the world. Google also wants to influence technology-driven youngsters to love using their products and services.
So, what better way to help maintain their critical applicant pool and develop their future customers than to inspire that generation with a science competition that offers big, big rewards.
The 2011 Google Science Fair is an online global science competition now open for anyone age 13 to 18. Applicants — with permission from their parents or guardians — use online Google web services and guidance to develop, implement, and report on a science project. Winners will receive huge monetary awards or internships or amazing experiences at research centers around the world.
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Sign up online and help your young Einstein develop their science skills with Google support. Teachers are also directed on how to encourage their students to participate and bring this exciting new opportunity to the classroom. The deadline for final project entry is April 4, 2011. If your family or classroom is participating, please let Dynamic Patterns Research know about your experience!
A recent National Science Foundation Distinguished Lecture series featured Michael Goodchild, a world-renowned geographer and director of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Center for Spatial Studies. On November 17, Prof. Goodchild presented his evolving views on the development and distribution of geographic information, and how these are being significantly influenced not only by new technologies, but, in particular, by the volunteer efforts of interested non-professionals connected in with the new technologies.
For the past five hundred years there has been a distinction between the professional experts who generate and distribute “official” or authoritative geographic information, and the amateur consumer of said geographic information. Maps, for example, were developed by professional “explorers” and distributed, often at high costs still today, by governments and other official organizations. Before this current era, however, the broader community was involved in communicating the details of the local and regional geographies. It seems, however, that with the advent of new social and connecting technologies, we are once again returning to these by-gone days of community mapping.
Prof. Goodchild discusses his more recent studies into how social networks and crowdsourcing activities by volunteers from around the world are successfully creating useful and new geographic information that rivals, if not routinely excels, what is generated by authoritative sources. What can be accomplished by a social network of individuals in terms of identifying geographic structures and other elements over broad distances or even over real-time scales cannot be reasonably completed by a lone researcher or by automated computers. This crowdsourcing efficiency from scale is one of the powers of citizen science and is why volunteers are beginning to be recognized and utilized by professional communities to help advance scientific work.
For example, with geotagging features on Flickr, valuable image data of geographic structures can be visualized into a comprehensive review of a region that may also contain direct textual accounts written by the volunteer photographer. Wikimapia is another example of a growing crowdsourced map that overlays detailed location information and stories onto the latest Google map. Volunteers zoom around the map and draw location outlines to identify the specific geographic content, and include additional information, stories, and photographs. With the extreme accessibility of geographic information, the role of the geographer is evolving into less of an analyzer of information and more of a synthesizer of geographic details from many sources.
A key issue arises during the synthesizing of volunteered information through the verification of its accuracy against authoritative information. False details will always be a prevalent feature of volunteered sources, but dealing with this feature is not necessarily an unreasonable task. Typically, just as content is being provided by the crowdsourced masses, so to will the filtering for accuracy be accomplished by the crowdsourced masses. And, the more popular a bit of volunteered information is, the more eyes will be reviewing the submitted data and chances of corrections as needed significantly increase.
In particular, Prof. Goodchild is trying to understand how useful crowdsourced geographical information is during emergency management issues, such as wild fires infiltrating residential areas in Santa Barbara, or damage reports post-earthquake in Haiti. With specific experiences of wild fires in California over the past several years, it was found that volunteered information about location and direction of raging fires were provided with near real-time resolution compared to crashed servers and severely delayed reports from “official” sources. Although the volunteered information contained false positives of wild fire location, and corrections may or may not have occurred on the short time frame, it is certainly better to think the fire is near your back door and make a decision to evacuate than otherwise.
Watch Prof. Goodchild’s 50-minute lecture and learn more about how the average, non-professional citizen is changing the field of geography. And, with the technology at your fingertips, you might be able to find ways to participate in useful geographic information development in your region of the world.
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“From Community Mapping to Critical Spatial Thinking” :: NSF’s Distinguished Lecture series :: November 17, 2010 :: [ READ MORE ]
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Do you use or contribute to a particular geographic information online resource? If so, please tell us about your experiences here and share the resource for others to discover.
What a special weekend for citizen scientists, amateur researchers, and do-it-yourself enthusiasts of all kinds (from techies to crafties)! The World Maker Faire is going on right now at the New York Hall of Science in Queens… the site of the 1964 World’s Fair.
This grand event features a plethora of wonderful projects, how-to’s, and hands-on experience for doing more cool things yourself. Key people in the DIY-world are presenting at the Faire, including Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, who spoke on Saturday about discovering and creating on your own interesting computational programs that do remarkable things.
If you aren’t attending this year’s Faire, you can keep track of the events taking place by checking out their daily postings.
If you are attending, please tell us what exciting things you discover, and post a picture on the Dynamic Patterns Research Facebook page.
The publishers of Make: Magazine have announced that September 2010 is officially “Citizen Science” month. They are looking for citizen scientists to submit their projects, research, and activities to be featured in the magazine.
It also seems that they are interested in developing active collaborations with people who are investing much time in the advancement of citizen science, and they hope to use this outreach to develop exciting new content for their “how-to” project division, Make: Projects.
If you are interested in participating in any way, please email Make: Magazine editor, Gareth Branwyn [ email ] … and also let us know here at Dynamic Patterns Research how you get involved with the magazine!
Many of you who involve yourself in citizen science projects, or personal amateur research might dream of designing dedicated laboratory spaces in ones’ own home or garage. Sort of like the “man cave” (or, “woman cave”!) for the science geek. This luxury might not always be possible due to space requirements, zoning conflicts, or just having too many kid toys to stash in the only non-inhabited room in the house.
Steven Roberts Computing and Biking Across America
Steven K. Roberts of … somewhere in the United States … had his own related complications with personal lab space, and developed a plan to create a new lab that was mobile. Mr. Roberts, who developed some fame after biking 17,000 miles across America between 1983 to 1991 in a digitally tricked-out bicycle, had developed a life-long personal technology skill that gave him the means to design the ultimate solution for the roaming amateur scientist.
In a Make: Magazine four-part series, Mr. Roberts outlines his development of Polaris, a mobile lab space, complete with computers, Ham radio, solar battery power, a long-range Wi-Fi connection to the Internet, and a minimum, yet effective, collection of parts, tools and computing resources.
Starting with an empty utility trailer, Mr. Roberts steps through the process of designing mounting racks, ceilings, lighting, and locking drawer systems. Of course, a personal mobile lab must be tailored to the interests of the individual, so he tries to outline a range of tips and ideas on what he found useful while designing his own perfect lab.
Mobile Lab designed by Steven Roberts; Courtesy Make: Magazine
If you are sitting on the couch just pouting that you have no space to build your own personal lab space, or just don’t want to limit the re-sale value of your home, then Mr. Roberts has the outline of the solution that will make your science cave come true.
After developing your own mobile (or static) lab space, please submit your photos, tips and stories to Dynamic Patterns Research to help others follow their geeky science dreams.
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“Make it anywhere with a mobile lab” :: Make: Magazine, online, 4-part series May – August, 2010 :: [ READ ]
Back in the day, families in general seemed to do most of the work needed for themselves by themselves, since this was really required if a family was to simply survive the day. Over the past 100 years, the reliance on professionalism across the globe has steadily increased. The advantages to this “outsourcing of life’s primary needs” approach are endless… we have professional farmers that allow our refrigerators to be full with only a trip to the grocery store; we have professional protectors who work efficiently at keeping dangers as far away from our doorstep as possible without us even being aware of those dangers.
There is an already growing popularity of amateur research efforts in astronomy and environmental sciences, and how well they support current professional scientists is becoming more appreciated. David Brin, science fiction author and futurist, discusses how the effectiveness of the amateur is coming back into trend, and even the US Department of Defense is beginning to realize the potential power of millions of citizens with their on-the-spot observational abilities connected with their high-performing computers and imaging devices in their pockets (a.k.a. cell phones) (read more).
Mr. Brin predicts a turning-the-tide of sorts between the professional and amateur, where the deluge of professionals in this world is causing a plateau in progress as there are just so many people who can actually get a job being a professional… should everyone in the neighborhood really try to become a Ph.D. physicist to profess at the local university? The exponential increase in information and scientific data to be processed by the professionals is driving the need for the masses and their interest in science. And, with this growing citizen science interest, the amateur movement will likely become a critical component in the successful advancements in new scientific understanding in the future.
Do you think the role of the amateur will be so important, or should science-at-home be left to the realms of educating our kids and the happy hobbyist?
