Today marks the release day for our Citizen Science interview series! Continuously we are going to publish interviews with different head of projects running on the SPOTTERON Platform.
When developing Citizen Science Apps, the usability has a big impact on how well and frequent people use them in the end. The goal for Citizen Science Apps is to become an important part in the everyday lives of their users in the long term, so that users can gain experience and can contribute important data to scientific projects.
On Wednesday, the 6th of March, the first "Day of Phenology" took place at the ZAMG in Vienna. We have also been invited by one of our project partners from the "Naturkalender App".
On the 25th of January 2019 the Vienna City Hall hosted the Vienna Ball of Sciences for the 5th time, held under the motto: “Waltz and Science". As Citizen Scientists from SPOTTERON it was a great pleasure, that we had been invited to film the event just as we did the year before.
Thanks for all the CitizenScience! We wish you a happy New Year's Eve and many more exciting #CitSci moments in the upcoming year. We have already new projects coming up, the first one about light pollution and Citizen Science will be ready in 1st of February. But for now, we are off until the end of first week of the new year - see you in 2019!
The next SPOTTERON Update brings 3 new extension for all Citizen Science apps on the platform. One of the new features are the upcoming "User Roles", part of SPOTTERON's data quality pack.
We were very proud to see that the latest Citizen Science project to join the SPOTTERON platform and also winner of the Australian Citizen Science Conference competition was featured on Australian news last week.
With the new SPOTTERON platform version 2.5 we bring two more highlights to all apps on the Citizen Science platform: First of all, the Offline Maps & Spots feature allows users to download map areas and spots on their phone for having them present, even when there is no internet connection available. This feature is a big improvement, specially for Citizen Science Apps, in which the main activity takes place often outdoors in the field where web connectivitiy is not always a given thing.
From 15th to 19th of October, the Citizen Science Summer School "Citizen Science in Theory and Practice" took place in "Grünau im Almtal", a small town in the south of Upper Austria. Grünau is particular famous for the KLF, the "Konrad Lorenz Reseach Station" where zoologist and Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz studied animal behavior and became one of the founders of modern ethology. Not far from the research station, a whole week was dedicated to Citizen Science and many interesting workshops, sessions and collaboration teamwork took place.
Last week it was time for the annual European Researchers Night, a mega event which takes place simultaneously in hundreds of cities all over Europe, again. Of course we couldn't miss it and went to the event at the TGM in the 20th district of Vienna.
Communication is an important factor in the Citizen Science field, not only within the projects themselves, but also among project leaders. For this purpose we implemented a forum on our website in the summer of 2018, which internally functions as a platform for exchange, networking and feedback.
We are happy to welcome a new project to the SPOTTERON platform this month. As you can tell by the name, „Brushturkeys - birds in suburbia“ is all about Australian Brushturkeys extending their natural habitat, which usually includes rainforests and woodlands, to suburban areas.
On 6th & 7th of September 2018, the "Forum Citizen Science" took place in Frankfurt, Germany, organised by the german Citizen Science hub "Bürger schaffen Wissen".
Hello there Frankfurt!
This Thursday and Friday, on the 6th and 7th of September, we will be in Frankfurt for the annual meetup of the German Citizen Science Community, the "Forum Citizen Science". We will be present during the entire conference, host a workshop and will also have a SPOTTERON stand.
All Citizen Science projects on the SPOTTERON platform can use all custom extensions on the platform without additional costs from the start.
Every two years, a big conference about Citizen Science takes place in an European Country - this time we travelled to Geneva in Switzerland, where the ECSA 2018 was happening.
Today we decided to went on a Easter Egg Hunt - and since it is raining heavily today we took this journey to another realm: the microcosm!
We are really happy to present to you: the very first CITIZEN SCIENCE ADVENTURE! The idea has been lingering in our heads for quite some time now and we were finally able to get this new and exciting project started. The kick-off was made by our beloved Philipp Jonathan with a quick introduction to phenology and a common snowdrop he spotted in the Nature's Calendar app in a viennese parc this weekend.
For the current Give-Away of a free Citizen Science App on the SPOTTERON platform for Australia, we did a short introduction video about what we do for Citizen Science and about the traits of the platform itself.
SPOTTERON goes Australia! We are happy to announce that we are giving away a customised geo-locatable free Citizen Science app among all members of the Australian Citizen Science Association that take part in the competition and tell us how their proposed geo-locatable citizen science app will increase scientific knowledge.
