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June 27, 2007
Notes from Working Groups at the Citizen Science Toolkit Conference
The mornings and afternoons at the conference were mostly structured like this: A half-hour opening talk, followed by three or four 15-minute focus talks, and then a 90-minute breakout discussion session in our working groups. In the working groups, we'd discuss questions that were designed to lead us towards the goal of establishing what a good toolkit for citizen science would be. I was in the Community Building group...there were also groups for Education, Evaluation and Impact, Technology and Cyberinfrastructure, and Research and Monitoring.
I took a few quick notes, mostly on random topics, during those breakout discussions, and thought I'd post them here also. So here goes:
- Linda Green noted that University of Rhode Island Watershed Watch has an excellent page of resources related to water monitoring. NOAA offers good workshops on program design. I think this is the link. Also, lots of resources are available from Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring National Facilitation Project.
- Paul Treadwell recommended screencasting as a good way to help train people on online applications.
- Master Gardner programs might offer good models for keeping track of effort, certifying, etc.. I also heard reference to Master Naturalist programs at the conference, but don't know a great deal about them yet. How cool would that be?!
- Communities can be based on several things. Eg., local/geographic (watershed, park), by interest/conceptual (birding, weather), by a practice (bird banding, water monitoring), by relationship to data (data gatherers, data users), or combinations of these.
- ZoAnn Morton of Pacific Streamkeepers is an absolute dynamo. She noted that they've found it takes about 13 years for a volunteer to get to the point of being able to sit at a watershed roundtable with politicians and be able to communicate effectively. And that it took four years of seeding a discussion forum until it took off to the point of being self-sustaining (this rings true; forums need tending to work). She also noted a program where bandanas were given out to dog owners who had received education about keeping their dogs out of sensitive habitats (I'm personally interested in this; I'd like to see a way to certify a dog for hiking in national parks). ZoAnn also mentioned a humorous story about a group wanting to set up a web camera in woodpecker habitat, and the concern about the audience they'd attract with the name "Pecker Cam".
- Recommended site: Children and Nature Network
- Recommended site: IndependentSector.org: "leadership forum for charities, foundations, and corporate giving programs committed to advancing the common good in America and around the world."
- Recommended site: Alabama Water Watch
- Recommended site: Stewardship Canada
- Ohio water monitoring legislation may have effectively killed volunteer water monitoring because of unreasonable requirements to be certified. (They should monitor as usual anyway!)
Still to come: reflections about the conference. Really, I promise.
Posted by terrie at June 27, 2007 06:16 AM
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