Summer Citizen Science - Wildlife Spotting

This workshop will introduce you to an app called iNaturalist, which is free for anyone to use to photograph and identify wildlife. Although you do not need specialist training to use it, this workshop will serve as a friendly introduction, an opportunity for questions and discussion, and also some ideas for event planning.

This event will be interactive and we will provide a platform for you to speak or write your questions or thoughts as we go along. However, if you are more comfortable just watching, you will not be required to say or write anything.

Children will be welcome to the event and we’ll encourage them to think about wildlife and introduce you to the child-friendly version of iNaturalist, an app called SEEK.

This event is open to anyone - it is aimed at beginners to Citizen Science, but experts and wildlife enthusiasts are extremely welcome too! You might be thinking of running some family or community events, learning more about conservation and wildlife, or just wanting something nice to do with the kids over the summer.

Agenda:

• Welcome and Introduction
• Short talk: Citizen Science and the iNaturalist app
• Activity: Wildlife identification with the iNaturalist app or website
• Short talk: Wildlife Citizen Science and Event Planning
• Activity: Group discussion about wildlife spotting, exchange ideas, Q&A

Children's wildlife stories, pictures and questions will be welcome!

We recommend you download the iNaturalist app, but this is not required if you do not want to. Please note that children under 14 should not download iNaturalist but rather the SEEK app. If you are concerned about online privacy you may also prefer the SEEK app.

Note on safety: Because children are welcome at the event, we will take special care regarding safety and privacy. We will run the event with cameras set to "off" (although you may turn your camera on if you wish) and there will be a way for you to post your questions or pictures anonymously.

Alice Sheppard is Community Manager at UCL Extreme Citizen Science. She has recently presented a series of Citizen Science Training Webinars aimed at researchers and interested members of the general public, and written a short course on working with citizen science volunteers. She helped with London's efforts to organise events for 2018 and 2019's City Nature Challenge, a friendly urban wildlife-spotting competition. Prior to her employment at UCL, she has given many public talks on citizen science, and has also worked in a science camp and as a "science party" presenter for young children.

What is Citizen Science?

There are many forms of Citizen Science, and no single definition captures them all! In general, it means that members of the public who aren’t currently working as scientists get involved in scientific research. This may be something very simple like using their smartphone to measure sky brightness, or it may be very involved such as getting a group of people together and learning scientific methods to monitor and report pollution. There are many public Citizen Science projects on an enormous range of topics. Citizen Science can be very suitable for young children and families.

What is iNaturalist?

iNaturalist is a wildlife identification app and website based in the US but used worldwide. You can photograph a species and an artificial intelligence will make a guess at its identification, and offer you several options which you may read about and see images of, then decide which is the likeliest. For your observation to be "research grade", other iNaturalist users have to verify your observation, so people's own eyes are essential! Over 100 million observations have been made worldwide by iNaturalist users, and the data is often used in scientific journals or to track migrations and invasive species.

What is the HEIDI Project?

The Erasmus+ project, HEIDI (“Digital Action at HEIs as a catalyst for social change in the Covid-19 crisis”), aims to provide training (for staff, decision makers, students, librarians, and communities) enabling Higher Education Institutions to better embrace and support bottom-up digital action (i.e. hackathons, makeathons and citizen science initiatives). Until 2023 we will be running 90 events (in the UK, France, Malta, Cyprus and Greece) and aim to engage more than 3,000 people.

HEIDI is supported by the ERASMUS+ programme of the European Union under Grant Agreement no. 2020-1-UK01-KA226-HE-094667.