SPOTTERON FOUR PREVIEW - A new generation of Citizen Science Apps is on the horizon
The SPOTTERON platform is always extending and together with projects across Europe, Australia, America, and Africa, new features and functionalities are constantly developed. With a new set of major core extensions and the overhaul of important syst...
This was the ECSA Citizen Science Conference 2022 in Berlin
From the 5th to the 8th of October, the ECSA Citizen Science Conference 2022 took place in Berlin under the motto "Citizen Science for Planetary Health."We have been attending this fantastic bi-annual event (for sure) and spent four days in Germany's...
Does Data Validation improve with the community's help in Citizen Science Apps?
The new "Community Data Validation" Feature on the SPOTTERON Platform allows Citizen Scientists to be more deeply involved in the scientific process. The feature update in the ClimateWatch App by Earthwatch Australia allows u...
Spatial Data Recording for Citizen Science Apps
Many Citizen Science and User Engagement projects utilize more than only point data for locations and spatial dimensions. Examples are plentiful - from setting up transects for counting butterflies to recording habitats and transformations. Spatial D...
User Mentions and Push Notifications - Enabling immediate direct communication for all Citizen Science Apps
Imagine a Citizen Scientist asking a question inside your project's App. What if a reply directly reaches the user on the smartphone with a beep as soon it is posted? This next level of immediacy is now a reality with the new "User Mention" feature f...
A Milestone for Citizen Science: SPOTTERON 3.0 is here!
It has been a busy year here at SPOTTERON. Despite the ongoing global pandemic, we are happy that a new platform generation is finally ready for your Citizen Science Apps! After months of building up the groundwork, thorough evaluation, testing and i...
"The Science of Citizen Science" Book has been published!
Starting the new year with some good news: The new open-action book, "The Science of Citizen science "has been finally published by Springer and is now availableas a free book (Open Access) for download.
With over a hundred contributing authors from 24 countries, including us, the book is a culmination of the work of the COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology in Europe) Action, "Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe ", COST Action CA15212.
Discover biodiversity — explore biodiversity: The new Citizen Science Game for the Natural History Museum NHM in Vienna, Austria
While we made our preparations for the European Citizen Science Association ECSA conference in Vienna, we had another task on our to-do list: let's make a game for the public day in the museum! But it is not any kind of game, it is the (probably) the largest computer game in Austria! In the Natural History Museum in Vienna, there is the "Deck ...
Citizen Science Dissemination for the IPM Popillia Project
In the last months, the IPM Popillia project, funded by Horizon 2020, has collaborated with SPOTTERON to create informational and dissemination materials about the invasive Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica), which has been spreading across Europe for several years. As part of the IPM Popillia Consortium, SPOTTERON created...
The very first App in the Indigenous Language Trio
Suriname has roughly 14 languages - the official and most spoken language is Dutch. One of Suriname's indigenous languages is Trio, which is spoken by the Tarëno, a conglomeration of analogous subgroups and distinct Amerindian groups (Mirella Nankoe, 2017). The total Tarëno population (Tarëno means "people from here") in Suriname can...
Data Security Layer: Protecting sensitive data in Citizen Science Apps
In many Citizen Science projects, there are distinct data categories which have a sensitive nature. From endangered species to details about personal lives in social science programmes, working with such data elements requires an additional level of protection and security. An integrated feature for better data safety in Citizen Science Together wi...
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SPOTTERON FOUR PREVIEW - A new generation of Citizen Science Apps is on the horizon
The SPOTTERON platform is always extending and together with projects across Europe, Australia, America, and Africa, new features and functionalities are constantly developed. With a new set of major core extensions and the overhaul of important system-related functionalities, the new platform version, SPOTTERON FOUR, brings new innovative tools an...
Citizen Science and iOS 17 - taking care of Citizen Science Apps
As you may have heard, iOS version 17 is on the horizon. A new operating system version introduces new features, polishes existing ones, and carries the torch further. But it also means that the App Store enforces an update of the "base system" on which mobile Apps for iOS are built on, and all existing Apps must be updated to the new software gene...
Designing a Youth Social Citizen Science Handbook for the YouCount Horizon EU 2020 Project
The Horizon Europe 2020 YouCount project recently concluded, summarizing its experiences and findings in a comprehensive Handbook. SPOTTERON has been a steadfast supporter of the Social Citizen Science project, e.g., in designing the YouCount Citizen Science App, the final conference, and now in creating the design for the recently published handbo...
Design process for Citizen Science project AmphiApp (BOKU Vienna)
The AmphiBiom project from BOKU Vienna focuses on comprehensive protection of the green toad and has therefore launched a new amphibian Citizen Science project: AmphiApp. SPOTTERON had the honor of visualizing the project and designing the Citizen Science App AmphiApp, the amphi.at website, the logo and visual ide...
Thank you for all the Citizen Science in 2023!
The year 2023 is slowly coming to an end, but before everyone goes into the well-deserved holidays, here is a quick update about SPOTTERON, new upcoming features, and also a nice season card handcrafted for you. But to start off with the most important thing: thank you very much for bringing so many interesting projects and features to SPOTTERON th...
Conference Design for the YouCount Social Citizen Science Project
The Final Conference for YouCount occurred in Brussels at the start of December. YouCount is a Social Citizen Science project that unites young individuals and stakeholders to collaboratively generate new knowledge and innovations that can contribute to addressing one of the complex societal challenges being faced by Europe: How to increa...
Conference Folder for the Citizen Science Project IPM Popillia
For IPM Popillia, we designed a folder for the Italian Citizen Science Conference in Pisa, which took place last weekend. This folder serves as an introduction to the project for fellow Citizen Science initiatives and individuals potentially interested in becoming Citizen Scientists. It includes key details about the project, insights on ...
Sharing the Soundscapes: Audio Recording in Citizen Science Apps
Besides the visual component of a Citizen Science observation, in some projects, recording audio is as important. From bird songs to amphibian calls, from city noise to dialects - sound recordings offer a distinct form of data in natural science projects, in linguistic citizen science, or even in capturing reports about environmental quality. ...
New ways of Science Communication: Ars Electronica Festival 2023
The European Space Agency and its new way of communicating with the public The climate crisis was one of the thematic focal points at the Ars Electronica Festival 2023, which took place in early September. The European Space Agency, whose observational data provides the basis for national and international efforts to predict future changes in clima...
Citizen Sciences at the Ars Electronica Festival 2023 - the European Union Prize for Citizen Science
Last weekend marked a historic moment for Citizen Sciences in Europe. The first-ever European Union Prize for Citizen Science was awarded on Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023 at this year's Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. The theme of the event was "Who owns the truth?" - a question that is particularly relevant for Citizen Sciences. We were on-site and wo...
Automated Reports from Citizen Science Apps about occuring observations
Sensitive topics like invasive alien species can lead to challenges when utilizing Citizen Science and public involvement. Observations can be time-sensitive, like disaster reports, or topic-sensitive, like controlled pests in agricultural monitoring. Some data categories even include legal requirements, like in the latter example, where new sighti...
HydroCrowd: Citizen Science App Release
The Citizen Science App for measuring rainfall and weather from HydroCrowd has only recently been released. HydroCrowd is a research project of the Justus Liebig University Giessen. The project explores the potential of participatory monitoring in selected mountainous regions in Ecuador, Honduras and Tanzania to increase the availability of hy...
2x Falling Walls Global Call Finalist
Recently the Falling Walls Global Call selected 50 finalists for the best science engagement projects from around the world! Among them are two Citizen Science projects whose Apps run on the SPOTTERON platform - YouCount, funded by Horizon Europe and Soils for Science from the University of Queensland, Institute for Molecular Bioscience. As pa...
Our Poster of Community Effects in Citizen Science Apps
For our participation in Citizen Science conferences, we have designed one of our this year's conference posters about the Community Effects in Citizen Science Apps and the effects that science communication and interaction have on a Citizen Science project's success. The poster was accepted and presented on several occasions, such as the Aust...
Featuring Future Conference by BOKU
We recently attended this year's Featuring Future Conference at the BOKU Vienna (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences) and were able to listen to significant lectures on the major topics of the future. In this blog, we want to share some exciting impressions of the conference and also talk about how essentially the concept of Citizen S...
European Union Price for Citizen Science
IMPETUS, a Europe-wide project to promote Citizen Science, recently awarded Citizen Science projects and published the selected award winners of the European Union Price for Citizen Science. Among them are two Citizen Science Apps running on the SPOTTERON App platform: Roadkill by the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Scien...
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