The extreme popularity and continuing scientific success of Galaxy Zoo and the subsequent explosion of the many Zooniverse projects have brought useful and important scientific research to the masses of interested citizens from around the world. Dynamic Patterns Research continues to support these awesome efforts, and is currently actively involved in the Planet Hunters program. Zooniverse has been adding new projects at an impressive rate–there are ten live projects now–and they apparently have no plans to slow down. In fact, they are now looking outward to the very group of people who processes their masses of data to brainstorm the next big citizen science project to be developed.
Hosted through the Citizen Science Alliance and with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Adler Planetarium, Zooniverse has announced an open call for proposals for future scientific projects that would benefit from the collective, analytical efforts of hundreds of thousands of remote volunteers. The proposals would need to have a direct connection with a scientific or research group, but the ideas should also be able to flow from citizen scientists themselves.
The next selection round of ideas will occur in January 2012, so plan on completing your submission in December 2011. If you are not familiar with the great Zooniverse projects, take some time to directly experience how powerful they are and the potential that the platform can have for so many other serious scientific questions that can only be successfully answered with the critical help from citizen scientists around the world.
It’s a great thing to be able to do real science on your own, and this is exactly what we encourage here at Dynamic Patterns Research. But, it’s even another great thing to be able to help inspire the desire to do real science in someone else. This is where a great new partnership between NASA, Teachers in Space, and MAKE Magazine is focused to bring exciting scientific experience to young minds.
The goal of the new “NASA Make: Challenge” is to solicit the ingenuity of makers and amateurs to develop inexpensive kits that can be built by students and then sent off into suborbital flights to perform some scientific experiment.
The deadline for submission of ideas is fast approaching on April 30, 2011 and the rules and guidelines are posted online.
This program is planned to be a multi-year event, but the first winning kit designs will be initially assembled by teachers at a workshop at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center’s AERO Institute in Palmdale, CA in early August 2011. These kits will then fly aboard the Excelsior STEM mission, which is an unmanned suborbital flight scheduled to fly aboard a Masten Space Systems reusable launch vehicle later in 2011.
This wonderful partnership is a great example of NASA’s new approach to finding success in the socially-connected and cash-strapped early 21st Century. As it becomes clear and ever more important that NASA must continue to evolve as a collaborative partner in space exploration and cutting-edge research (read the 2011 NASA 2011 Strategic Plan), they are also increasing their emphasis on partnerships with a broader base of academic institutions as well as directly approaching the exploding citizen science community. In particular, NASA’s new Open Government Initiative, just released last year and is now under development even though “openness” was part of their original 1958 founding legislation, is creating an updated culture of connection between their scientists and engineers and the rest of the country’s citizenry.
Read the NASA Open Government Plan
This renewed energy from NASA should be a boon to those citizen scientists interested in finding more direct ways to collaborate with the exciting scientific resources and research fields that NASA is mandated to tackle. Although created by an academic middle-man from the UK, Chris Lintott, the exploding Zooniverse of citizen science projects is the greatest example right now of the successful connection between NASA-generated data (through the Hubble Space Telescope, the Kepler Mission, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the STEREO Space Observatories) and the important scientific analysis performed by volunteers from around the world. NASA is proud of these endeavorers, and readily brags about the progress (“Citizen Scientists Making Incredible Discoveries“, NASA Science News, April 22, 2011).
NASA wants to provide critical tools for citizen scientists. It is not only an aspect of their mandate to be an open source scientific resource, but the valuable role that citizen scientists now play in the advancement of science is becoming more clear each and every day. NASA wants to be successful, and they know that they must collaborate with the private sector and the private citizenry to help become what they want to be, especially since the US Congress struggles every year to fund this much needed success.
NASA's first-year progress toward their new plan of being an Open Government Scientific Resource.
As a seasoned citizen scientist, or if you are wanting to simply whet your appetite for scientific adventures and informal self-learning, the time is ripe now to connect with NASA and take a direct part in the rapid development of new technologies and exciting scientific discoveries that are happening right now and will happen in the near future.
Please let us know at Dynamic Patterns Research what sort of connections you have made or are in the process of developing so that we might learn more about the great new opportunities that could be out there for other citizen scientists.
The fundamental evolutionary advantage of human beings over all other species on this planet is our ability to make things. We make tools to make more complex tools to make end products that help us survive, thrive, and develop. Pre-humans may have started making simple tools over 2 1/2 millions years ago and serious complex tool-making took off during the Bronze Age just a brief 5,000 years ago.
Ever since those grand old days, humans have been exponentially improving our making abilities. Today, we’re extremely good at it, and there is a growing population of amateur “Makers” who are creating a serious hobby out of playing with technology and discovering personal skills to prove that they are the ultimate in human beings right from their own garage.
Dale Dougherty, the founder and publisher of MAKE: Magazine, recently presented a TED Talk on the growing presence of makers across the country. They tinker in their garages, at Maker Faires, and at hackerspaces, and Dale wants to convinces us all that each one of us is a maker at heart. He must be right — we are human beings, after all — we just need to tap into that core evolutionary skill and start making.
Watch Dale Dougherty’s TED Talk from the Motor City:
The scientific literacy of the American student has been dropping for quite some time now, and we often hear about this serious problem (here and here and, oh, over here). Our national educational system — from both the public and private sectors — are in place to do something about it, and many have great intentions to do so.
One institution of higher education, Bard College, launched a new program before classes started in January 2011 with the goal of instilling a new sense of appreciation for scientific understanding and process (read the press release, April 10, 2010). Citizen Science at Bard College (visit) is required for all incoming Freshman and includes faculty from across the country to engage with students in a new and exciting educational forum. (Read more: Citizen Science at Bard Article.)
The inaugural students’ responses from this largely “right-brained”-leaning school were mixed. Some were annoyed that they lost time from their break while others approached the academic pursuit as something that could really broaden their outlook. This unsurprising span is certainly common in all classrooms, but with no grades nor credits at stake and only the requirement of guided scientific playing, this effort by Bard College is an outstanding idea to spark renewed excitement in science for the next generation of United States citizens.
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“An Infusion of Science Where the Arts Reign” :: The New York Times :: January 21, 2011 :: [ READ ]
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The Citizen Science course from Bard College should not directly create a new breed of professional scientists — this is the opposite goal of the program. More scientists in this country are always needed, but everyone doesn’t need to play that role. This country more desperately needs a broader base of its citizens to have an increased appreciation of science and technology.
We don’t need to be able to calculate the thermal emission and resulting temperature distribution in our living rooms when we just need to decide if we want to screw in a 60 W or 100 W light bulb in the lamp on the coffee table. However, we do need to be able to think about what we hear from the professionals and the politicians and the pundits. These “Three Ps” are supposed to be out there to help the rest of the world advance into a better future, but sometimes — and maybe more often than some of us would like — they claim ideas that really need to be shut down and sorted into File 13.
Forcing Physics 101 onto first-year college students has been the vehicle to drive science rigor into our daily brain activity. And while this should still be a important component to this effort, Physics 101 alone is proving to be inefficient in its results. Citizen Science is growing into a viable outlet for broad based scientific appreciation in informal education, and developing this approach in the classroom will be a critical advancement in academia’s responsibility to the future of scientific literacy in America.
Dynamic Patterns Research will be looking forward to watching Citizen Science in the Classroom explode through universities and high schools in the next few years. If you are involved in these sorts of efforts or are interested discussing how to make Citizen Science active at your academic institution, please contact Dynamic Patterns Research to see what fires we can start together.
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!
Recently, Dynamic Patterns Research featured an article on how new federal money — funneled through the NOAA — is being directed to citizen science efforts (read more). Now, additional research dollars from the National Science Foundation have been awarded to an associate professor in the Department of Sociology from Washington State University.
Prof. Scott Frickel, Washington State University
Prof. Scott Frickel received nearly $57,000 to direct his innovative research on the use of citizen science in the response to the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill. In particular, Prof. Frickel will study how the “experts” involved in the disaster worked directly with members of the affected communities to produce meaningful scientific results in the environmental outcomes of the event. Working mostly with fisherman along the coastline, the ultimate goal of this research will be to analyze a real-world example of a citizen science collaboration to better understand how it functioned and how successful citizen science can be performed.
Certainly, the dollar amount awarded for this project is only a trickle in the United States government’s FY 2009 $3.52 trillion budget: Prof. Frickel is receiving only 0.00000162% of the total allocations. Nonetheless, this represents an important expansion of the recognition of the importance of how citizen science contributes to our society. In fact, the federal government is heading into another session of juggling severe budget cuts against calls for increased scientific funding (when is the US government not juggling… everything?) with new demands for focusing efforts on research, in particular in the area of sustainable energy (read more from American Public Media’s Marketplace broadcast on November 29, 2010).
Although government funding of scientific research can begin with only a best guess of what will be the most important scientific advancement of tomorrow, the funding agencies must do just that. Think: the computer, lasers, the Internet, GPS navigational systems, and even Google… all came from an essentially random grant that slipped through a governmental funding agency. And, today, nearly every person in the entire world is affected on a daily basis by these important developments.
The United States’ funding efforts toward scientific, technological, and medical research have proven critical and invaluable time and time again. So, it is exciting to see a growth now in citizen science funding because there is a strong chance that efforts from the amateur will once again some day be a cultural game-changer. And, maybe the United States government will actually be there to seed the next great revolution in science–from the citizen scientist.
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“NSF grant funds ‘citizen science’ collaboration” :: WSU Today :: November 29, 2010 :: [ READ MORE ]
