You are currently browsing the archives for November, 2008.
While I wait for my iPod to update to the latest firmware, I took a quick trip through my iTunes playlists and was reminded about my @Last Five list for what I have listened to most recently. Here’s the latest:
Leave it to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to come up with another cool way to engage us in their research. I have always enjoyed their backyard bird studies that allow folks from all over the world to gather data from their own world and share it with the scientists at Cornell.
Now, they have CamClickr (missing a vowel, of course,so it must be cool!) which is done entirely online. This is a game-like environment that helps analyze their catalog of nest cameras. From the site:
Now we are enhancing this learning experience by introducing, CamClickr, a year-round citizen science project carried out completely online that allows cam viewers to “tag” and classify breeding behaviors from our archived images. CamClickr will help us answer questions that can only be answered using the cams while providing scientists with a tool to search and sort images once they are tagged. It’s fun, easy, and promises to change the way you think about breeding behavior! Try it for yourself and see if you can become the top CamClickr!
This is clearly engaging, really science and just kinda fun. The sorta thing I wish I had done when I worked in the informal science field.
Image: ‘The Navigator‘
www.flickr.com/photos/53991500@N00/53742127
I have totally been wowed by NASA’s use of social media to explain, explore, enthuse and otherwise entertain us with their mission to Mars via the Phoenix robot lander.
I followed the little guy in Twitter (over 38K followers!) which was great fun as we got information about the mission and what was being discovered.
He also was a guest blogger on Gizmodo, which some folks might have dismissed as a Wall-E kinda thing but I thought it was very clever and probably did a lot for science education. I mean, why not use the communication tools of today to share information and fascination with everybody in the way that they want to get it.
Really, really good stuff.
But, today was the Phoenix’ last blog entry and a farewell on Twitter made it pretty obvious:
As the robot shuts down and ends its work in the Mars winter. I will miss those little updates but I will also really consider how NASA made such good use of the technology available to spread their information wealth.
Phoenix Mars Lander: This is My Farewell Transmission From Mars
