Students learn that ordinary citizens, including students like themselves, can make meaningful contributions to science through the concept of "citizen science." First, students learn some examples of ongoing citizen science projects that are common around the world, such as medical research, medication testing and donating idle computer time to perform scientific calculations. Then they explore Zooniverse, an interactive website that shows how research in areas from marine biology to astronomy leverage the power of the Internet to use the assistance of non-scientists to classify large amounts of data that is unclassifiable by machines for various reasons. To conclude, student groups act as engineering teams to brainstorm projects ideas for their own town that could benefit from community help, then design conceptual interactive websites that could organize and support the projects.
- Subject:
- Applied Science
- Engineering
- Material Type:
- Activity/Lab
- Provider:
- TeachEngineering
- Provider Set:
- TeachEngineering
- Author:
- Jennifer Nider
- Lori Rice
- Paul Cain
- Sujatha Prakash
- Yasche Glass
- Date Added:
- 09/18/2014
