How is citizen science similar to what ants do?

1. Citizen science in schools
Kai Pata
kpata@tlu.ee
Big goal– involve citizens to making science– why and how?

2. What is common to citizen science and ants?

3. Swarming behaviors
Following the signal tracts and taking action accordingly
Simultaneous monitoring and awareness of the others
and the signals accumulated into the environment and
using those for action and planning own goals.
Signals left to the
environment
accumulate and
dissipate in time

4. Swarming behaviors
Building the termite nest – how blind insects can collaborate by signals

5. Movement of the flock is awareness based, tracing nearby agents
Flocks of birds and fish

6. Distributed cognition
• The distributed cognitive system
serves as a partially external and
uncontrollable locus of control
(Hollan, et al., 2000).
• People form a tightly coupled system
with their environments, and the
latter serves as one’s partner or
cognitive ally in the struggle to
control the activity (Hollan, et al.,
2000).
• We actualize certain dimensions from
the environment around us integrating
it to the action-plans, and
simultaneously the environment
extends certain dimensions to us
changing and shaping our intentions.

7. • There are two main ways in which, distributed cognition may be
framed – epistemic distributed cognition (person level) and
collective distributed cognition (culture level), which are mutually
interrelated
How learning
environments
become smart?
How individuals make
use of smart
environment
- responsive
processes between
agents’ and
collective level

8. Embodied cognition
• Discoveries in cognitive and
neuroscience about the
functioning of mirror-neuron
systems (Gallese et al., 1996),
claim, that cognition is
embodied through grounding
knowledge directly in sensory-
motor experiences without the
mediation of symbolic
representations (Pecher &
Zwaan, 2005).
• W perceptually activate certain
multi-modal action-
potentialites of embodied
symbols that directly mediate
our purposeful and goal-
directed actions (see Gallese &
Lakoff, 2005).
• the action-related cues are
picked up and integrated into
our action plans and through
these actions modified and
offloaded to the public

9. Sharing inquiry
challenge
Discovering a
challenge – SIGNAL
in a location
Collecting data,
participating with
action
Guided awareness
to follow the
challenge
Continuing the
activity in
another location
Discovering another
challenge in same
location/theme
CHALLENGE BECOMES
ATTRACTIVE TO MANY
Following new
challenge
Scientists and citizen
organizations can set up
citizen science challenges
HOW/WHERE TO LEAVE THE SIGNALS
HOW TO NOTICE
THE SIGNALS
HOW TO SHOW
CURRENTLY ACTIVE
SIGNALS TO INVOLVE
HOW TO PULL TO
THE CHALLENGE –
THE FLOW
EXPERIENCE
HOW TO INVOLVE TO
OTHER CHALLENGES
HOW TO USE COMMONLY
COLLECTED DATA FOR GOOD
PURPOSES COLLECTIVELY AND
INDIVIDUALLY

10. Citizen science challenges
Dhared responsibility
and inclusion in
problem solving
Swarm based
datacollection
Citizens using data
Citizens as sensors
Creating challenges
for inquiry
http://www.labucketbrigade.org/content/bucket
Citizens open up the
problem and explain the
results from their point
of view
http://www.teemeara.ee
Prügikohtade kaardistamine

11. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xow3Ii_EqO2yQu1nkwp7n8b8MYqAF2gqoerD01S7-yc/edit#

13. Circular economy – awareness and involvment
mechanisms with digital technologies
Plogging https://plasticwhale.com
Fishing for bottles

14. Citizen science challenges
Involvement to responsibility
of solving problems
Swarm based inquiry
Citizens using data
Citizens as sensors
Citizens participating in opening up the
problem and making sense of results
Citizens creating inquiry
challenges
Amateurs contributing to
research
Researchers and society benefitting from data

15. Inquiry swarm studying light pollution
How to create own challenges?
Create MyMap and share collaboration
Embed task
and data to
the map, or
embed the
survey items
to the map.

16. Citizen science challenges
Citizens co-
responsibility in
solving problems
Inquiry swarm
Citizens use the data
Citizens serve as sensors
Citizens participate in
opening up the problem
and making sense of
results
Citizens creating
inquiry challenges
https://www.zooniverse.org
Digitalizing data
Sorting data
Man at the street found exoplanets

17. Citizen science challenges
Inclusive co-
resposnibility
Swarm based inquiry
Citizens use data
Citizens as sensors
Citizens create
challenges
How to use data for the sake
of citizens and individuals?
Citizens are involved in
opening up of the
problem and making
sense of results

18. Novel ideas for digital textbooks
Citizen science challenges
Textbook figures are situated to own data
Inquiry swarm
School 1 School 3
It will be possible of
exercising citizen
science, having self-
motivation in exploring
own data, comparing it
across places etc.
School 2
Textbook has open
slots for figures that
appear after inquiry
swarmimg activities

19. Some links of citizen science in education
Projects that collect and share data
• UNESCO Läänemere projekt: http://bsp.teec.ee
• Globe projekt Eestis: https://globe.ee
Amateur scientists’ and citizen science activities
• Collect data from nature as an amateur- eElurikkus https://elurikkus.ut.ee/
• Help the archive - http://www.ra.ee/uurijale/uhisloome/
• Citizen science project portals:
• http://Anecdata.org
• https://www.zooniverse.org
• http://citsci.org/cwis438/websites/citsci/home.php?WebSiteID=7
• http://socientize.eu
• Create inquiry swarm activity, use sensors for collecting data : use google maps, google forms,
SmartZoos https://rada.smartzoos.eu
• Create a citizen science project yourself: http://Anecdata.org
http://www.ra.ee/uurijale/uhisloome/