Visit Citizen Science For Everyone on Github pages.
Citizen science has been a part of my life since 2007 when I started taking part in an astronomical crowdsourcing website called Galaxy Zoo (GZ). I didn't know much about astronomy at that point, but through joining in the discussions on the GZ forum, I began to learn a lot more about astronomy but also what citizen science was. By volunteering to do scientific work such as classifying galaxies, I had become an amateur scientist! Indeed, through the GZ website and its forum I became engaged with citizen science when I started to discover objects and meet some of the scientists who were using the data that hundreds of thousands of people had produced. Personally, I helped discover rare galaxies and discovered 32 supernovae. Since 2007, there have not been many weeks that I have not made some contribution to the process.
This website concentrates on educational resources for citizen science. There are links to example projects, which include those who prefer to stay inside and participate via a desktop (like myself) or those who want to get outside and get water samples, for instance. There are links to academic studies for those who want to join in or who are sceptical about whether anything is worthwhile: as I explain, hard cash is used to fund this scientific work.
Through this website, I hope to introduce people to what citizen science is and the activities that can be taken part in by grown-ups and children. While readers aren't expected to sign-up to a project, a seed might be planted that can help on a local, national or international collaboration. I spent a few years as teacher, so I know something about education and its challenges and rewards. Please use the links: they will become very important when trying to answer the three quizzes!
- Featured on all five pages, the full responsive navigation bar includes links to each page to allow for easy navigation.
- Text is easy-to-read with a black Raleway text against an almost white background.
- Paragraphs within pages are sensibly organised with a logical procession of subjects.
- Headers are given to different sections for clarity.
- All pictures are 'clickable'. When clicked on, images expand to their full size.
- The three quizes use a pop-up format, wth the first two concerned with the website, and a third concerned with the general knowledge gained through the large Wikipedia article 'Citizen Science'.
- The links on the Activities and Achievements page take the user to the correct sites.
- The YouTube videos demonstrate different aspects of citizen science.
- The website has been made to include semantic coding for screen readers and the partially-sighted.
The colour scheme is based around a blue colour and complimentary colours, as below:
The homepage has image background of scientists working that has been changed using an opacity effect. This is quite deliberate as it is countered by images of citizen scientists, for example grandmothers in Australia imaging wildlife found on coral reefs. These are free, high resolution images which can be clicked on to see the full size.
The homepage will seek to introduce the reader to what citzen science is and where the term comes from. It will pose questions such as:
- What is citizen science?
- Why should I be interested?
- It's not real science is it?
- How many people have taken part?
- Are there projects I can take part in?
- Is it just for adults or can children join in?
I asked three friends I have got to know over the decades since 2007 and how they feel about CS. Alice Sheppard works for University College London's geography dept. She is the community manager for the ExCiteS project and as such meets a lot of interested people. I first met Alice through a series of social events for citizens as a result of Galaxy Zoo. Alice was the moderator on the Galaxy Zoo forum and we took part in discovering rare galaxies. In 2009, she even came to speak at my local astronomy club about it, an event that is still on YouTube.
Ine Theunissen-Limpens lives in the Netherlands and is mainly a supernovae reporter. Indeed, such is Ine's skill in that task he has discovered over 130 supernova so far on his own and is on course to become one of the Galaxy Zoos' most prolific citizen scientists. While working within the Dutch health system, Ine has done more discovering than many professional scientists ever will.
Christine Macmillan is a moderator on the present incarnation of Galaxy Zoo and is someone I've also met up with. Her patience is remarkable and she is always trying to help people become better astronomers and scientists. The present GZ attracts a wide variety of people and is used by educational establishments.
This page will introduce the reader to the astounding number and range of different citizen science projects and includes a simple quiz to help people decide what might suit them. From counting butterflies to clearing marine plastic, from counting lions and ai pollution monitoring, volunteers can and do make a difference. I've made contributions to astronomy through citizen science and many other volunteers' results have made their way into real published sceince. The two YouTube videos can inform potential citizen scientists about what might be available. Each are around 5 or 6 minutes long.
An image of the Activities page quiz.
The 8 citizen science projects are:
- The Bristol Approach: what is citizen sensing?
- Ocean Cleanup, part of the growing organisation to cleanup plastic waste from marine environments.
- SciStarter is a portal that lists hundreds of possible projects to take part in.
- UK center for Ecology and Hydrology has smartphone apps.
- The National Geographic site contains examples of popular projects.
- The Conservation Volunteers website is based in Scotland and has projects like "HogWatch Scotland".
- The Wildlife Trust website has a multitude of projects, some of which might be suitable for youngsters.
- Good nature: citizen science trips and holidays in the UK (The Guardian).
This page demonstrates that citizens can do real science and the results can be scientifically worthwhile. As the opening paragraph points out, if citizen science didn't produce scientifically-accepted results, then no-one would use it. Money is spent producing these studies because the results have been demontrated time and again. The one YouTube video shows how CS can effect ordinary people. Featured is Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel who is a friend who I have met with several times. She discovered a rare astronomical object which is named after her- "Hanny's Voorwerp". People generally get something out of which ever project they use, though having a voorwerp named after you is very special.
An image of the Achievements page quiz.
The eight academic studies are:
- "Describing Vocalizations in Young Children: A Big Data Approach Through Citizen Science Annotation."
- "Exploring the role of smartphone technology for citizen science in agriculture."
- "Millions of historical monthly rainfall observations taken in the UK and Ireland rescued by citizen scientists."
- "Of Scribes and Scripts: Citizen Science and the Cairo Genizah."
- "ForestEyes Project Citizen Science and Machine Learning to detect deforested areas in tropical forests."
- "Deep learning for automatic segmentation of the nuclear envelope in electron microscopy data, trained with volunteer segmentations."
- "Citizen science, computing, and conservation:How can “Crowd AI” change the way we tackle large-scale ecological challenges?"
- "Involving recreational snorkelers in inventory improvement or creation: a case study in the Indian Ocean."
The contacts page has a quiz that takes the user via a link to the Wikipedia article "Citizen Science". This is a large article and the quiz is difficult, which is a good way to introduce people to the larger picture. Also, it is hoped to introduce users to the many different types of citizen science and some of its history.
There is also a Jotform should you wish to enquire more about any aspect of the website.
An image of the Contacts page quiz.
While there is no organisation that can be linked to, three links are given to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Image below:
The website was assembled using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript ES6. I used the desktop program Microsoft VS code and online Gitpod. I used Gitpod a lot more this time than in the previous project for clarity and to practise in a more professional setting. The website was continously tested during its build with W3 validations, PageSpeed Insights and JSHint. No AI was used in the construction of the code.
Code Beautify was used to tidy code and helped reveal poorly-executed code. The website was viewed with several android phones, Windows 10 laptops, an iPad and a 24" separate desktop screen. Three browsers Firefox, Chrome and MS Edge were checked. My DELL AIO desktop has an up-to-date Linux Ubuntu OS with a 24" screen. This displayed the images well, though some of the styling looked odd.
With the code at the present time, no bugs were found. Performance suffered on the pages with embedded YouTube links. All links were found to work using the buttons provided. The 3 quizzes have 5 questions each with 3 possible choices. The quizzes worked and rejected wrong answers or invalid input. The pass mark was set to 4 out of 5, but this is easily changed as can the questions.
The website was deployed on the 16th April 2023 using GitHub pages. The site was found to be responsive and all links worked, including the image links to the data hosting site. Wireframes and development images were used to tweak layout, while two YouTube video links and four pictures that were found to reduce performance were removed. The Google fonts link were successful. Bootstrap framework for flex-containers and buttons worked well. Font Awesome supplied the icons using a v6.4 kit. CSS styling linked through GitHub worked as did the scripts. The Jotform contact form worked and users have submitted messages.
Validation was used from the W3 html and css validation websites, while JavaScript was tested using JS Hint (screenshots below). Pagespeed Insights was used to test for accessibility for each page using mobile and desktop results. All pages cleared accessibility tests on mobiles and desktops, each scoring 100.
.jpg?raw=true "csfe-jshint-jotform(supplied)")
Fifteen wireframes were made using the website Balsamiq. They show images for an iPhone, desktop browser and iPad. Six are shown below. As can be seen, while some pages have not changed much, others have lost videos or images, mainly for performance issues. Indeed the title has changed and lost the 'is' for brevity.
Pictures can be clicked on for full size.
Link to wireframe folders: csfe-wireframes.
- Thanks to Muki Hacklay form University College London. His blog provided two images and information: Muki Hacklay.
- Background image of scientists from Freepik: Freepik scientists.
- Two grandmothers diving and photographing sea snake (Wiki Commons): Diving grannies imaging sea snake.
- Cascades butterfly project team (Wiki Commmons): The Cascades butterfly project.
- Citizen Science Communities (Wiki Commons): Citizen science communities.
- Couple sitting by fireplace from Freepik: Couple and log fire.
- The River Restoration Centre The River Restoration Centre.
- Storybench and iNaturalist by Jessica Decker Storybench and iNaturalist.
- Eco Sapien - What is Citizen Science? What is Citizen Science?
- Citizen Scientists - Afon Llynfi Friends of the Upper Wye river.
- The discovery of a citizen scientist by Hanny van Arkel on TEDxGhent: Hanny van Arkel on TEDxGhent.
- Medicine from garbage? by Paul McQuiston: Medicine from garbage? New process shows promise.
- Citizen science: How families can contribute to real science Space scientists.
- The ISeeChange project is a global community that documents local changes in environment, weather, and climate. Environmental pollution.
- Special thanks to my mentor Rory Sheridan.
- JavaScript syntax was taken from W3 Schools and Mozilla Developer. Stack Overflow was used for information and checking.
