What is citizen science and can my students be involved in a meaningful way?
Citizen science is when members of the general public help gather or analyze data. This is typically done as a collaborative project with professional scientists.
Zooniverse is an online collection of collaborative projects for the general public to participate and help scientists. This is a great site to use to incorporate citizen science into the classroom.
I made an account on Zooniverse.org and then shared the user name and password with my class after modeling how to use Zooniverse. We started with the Wildwatch Kenya project. I projected my screen and we went the "Get Started" tutorial together as a class. I had students come up and make classifications. As a group, we became familiar with how the site worked and we got excited about the animals we saw.
Then, I sent students on their own to explore Zooniverse and Wildwatch Kenya. I had students share when they found a cool picture or we worked together when a picture was hard to identify. As the year went on, students had favorite projects they liked to work on. It gave students choice and a meaningful way to help scientists.
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