As I continue to prod along with the production of my podcast: “Unless: Stories of Everyday Earth-Savers”, I have not completely abandoned the dream of a regularly updated general science and science education YouTube Channel. While I rebuild the website and start working on ideas for scripts, please enjoy this oldie.
In this episode I talk about citizen science, a process where community stakeholders; often times non-experts in the field, contribute to the scientific method. Typically, this involves data collection and interpretation.
If you are more comfortable in front of a keyboard, or have a very busy schedule, but are still interested in contributing to the body of scientific and historical knowledge, there are many websites from which to find a project and start contributing. One of the largest and best organized (IMHO) is still zooniverse.org. This website offers many different projects for you to work on, from interpreting nature photographs to translating historical texts, the project is a worthwhile use of free time. For educators, the website also can easily be used in many different curricula and is especially useful as an engagement tool.
Should you venture to watch the video, zooniverse has updated some of their interface in the past few years, but the core concept and controls still stay the same.