Would you call this a citizen science activity?

This is an invitation to complete a survey that is available at  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7XN5MQG This survey will present you stories about different forms of public participation in research. Different activities within this area of public participation in research are now called “citizen science” and we would like to hear what your opinion is about each activity. …

Citizen Science 2019: Citizen Science: Creating Authentic Learning Opportunities for Students

The second day opened with an introduction to Kenan Fellows https://kenanfellows.org/ which is a programme to link teachers and provide STEM experience, and therefore they integrate citizen science in schools. Following this, Rachael Polmanteer, who is marine biologist turned 8th-grade science teacher, gave a keynote. Rachael is from Bath, New York (state) and she grows …

Citizen Science & Scientific Crowdsourcing – week 2 – Google Local Guides

The first week of the "Introduction to Citizen Science and Scientific Crowdsourcing" course was dedicated to an introduction to the field of citizen science using the history, examples and typologies to demonstrate the breadth of the field. The second week was dedicated to the second half of the course name - crowdsourcing in general, and its …

Chapter in ‘Understanding Spatial Media’ on VGI & Citizen Science

The book 'Understanding Spatial Media' came out earlier this year. The project is the result of joint effort of the editors Rob Kitchin (NUI Maynooth, Ireland), Tracey P. Lauriault (Carleton University, Canada), and Matthew W. Wilson (University of Kentucky, USA). The book is filling the need to review and explain what happened in the part 20 years, with the increase use …

Spatial Conversation – #VGIday #COSTEnergic

The COST Energic network (see VGIBox.eu ) is running a 2 day geolocated twitter chat, titled 'Volunteered Geographic Information Day' so the hashtag is #VGIDay. The conversation will take place on 14th and 15th May 2015, and we are universalists - join from anywhere in the world! Joining is easy - and require 3 steps: Follow the …

Reflections on Eye on Earth summit (2): the 3 eras of public access to environmental information

As noted  in the previous post, which focused on the linkage between GIS and Environmental Information Systems,  the Eye on Earth Summit took place in Abu Dhabi on the 12 to 15 December 2011, and focused on ‘the crucial importance of environmental and societal information and networking to decision-making’.  Throughout the summit, two aspects of …

Web Mapping 2.0 – an introduction to Neogeography in Geography Compass

In October 2007, Francis Harvey commissioned me to write a review article for Geography Compass on Neogeography. The paper was written in collaboration with Alex Singleton at UCL and Chris Parker from the Ordnance Survey. The paper covers several issues. Firstly, it provides an overview of the developments in Web mapping from the early 1990s …

Web 2.0 notion of democratisation and Participatory GIS

An interesting issue that emerges from The Cult of the Amateur is about Participatory GIS or PPGIS. As Chris Dunn mentioned in her recent paper in Progress in Human Geography, Participatory GIS makes many references to ‘democratisation’ of GIS (together with Renee Sieber’s 2006 review, these two papers are excellent introduction to PPGIS) . According …

Democratisation in Web 2.0 and the participation inequality

Continuing to reflect on Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur, I can’t fail to notice how Web 2.0 influences our daily lives – from the way we implement projects, to the role of experts and non-experts in the generation of knowledge. Some of the promises of Web 2.0 are problematic – especially the claim for …

The Cult of the Amateur – worth reading

I have just finished reading Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur, which, together with Paulina Borsook’s Cyberselfish, provides quite a good antidote to the overexcitement of The Long Tail, Wikinomics and a whole range publications about Web 2.0 that marvel in the ‘democratisation’ capacity of technology. Even if Keen’s and Borsook’s books are seen …