zooniverse education - teachmeet nashville

Citizen Scienceand the Zooniverse

Kelly A. Borden – Senior Educator for Citizen Science Adler Planetarium

Chicago, Illinois

kelly@zooniverse.org

@zooteach

What we do….

Zooniverse is a collection of online citizen science projects from across a variety of scientific disciplines.

Citizen Science

Many hands make light work….

How does Zooniverse work?

Data, too much of a good thing?

Some things to ponder….

Crowdsourcing

Taking a big problem and breaking it into small pieces that many people can help to solve.

Galaxy Zoo

Training

Why can’t a computer do this?

Can I break science if I am wrong?

It worked!

• Over 40 peer-reviews papers published using Galaxy Zoo data

• 1.25 million galaxies have been classified, each by multiple volunteers

• Serendipitous discoveries

Seafloor Explorer

Zooniverse volunteers identify groundcover and animals on the seafloor to help scientists understand the distribution of animals and habitats on the ocean floor.

Seafloor Explorer by the numbers….

• 40,000,000 images to be classified• 986,282 images classified in first two

months of the project• 5,479 hours of human effort• 2 years 8 months for one person working

fulltime to complete this task (with no vacation)

on-going research,open questions

Why Zooniverse in the classroom?

• Authentic scientific experience

• Real data

• Contributing to cutting-edge research

• Free

A project for everybody….

Resources for Teacherswww.zooteach.org

Zooniverse Education Blog

education.zooniverse.org

Data Exploration Tools

Galaxy Zoo Navigator

http://www.galaxyzoo.org/#/navigator/home

Zooniverse Ambassadors Teacher Workshop

August 8th-9th

Adler Planetarium, ChicagoTravel Costs & Stipend

Apply online at education.zooniverse.orgApplications due June 7th