From students into scientists – Citizen science at schools

From observations to citizen science

“Observational data collected by crowdsourcing are called citizen observations. They are observations made on the observer's own initiative and on a voluntary basis on various topics observable in the environment and they have been submitted for common use. Observations can be made either on an individual citizen’s own initiative or they can be activities jointly agreed by different associations or groups… 

Various targets and environmental monitoring applications can also be agreed to be used for observation. In that case, crowdsourcing and voluntary work may also be extended to ensure a sufficient number of observations to verify the accuracy of the observations or to summarize the observations. When also ordinary citizens are involved in asking research questions and drawing conclusions from summaries of findings, it can be called citizen science. Citizens’ observations are a part of citizen science.” (https://www.ymparisto.fi/fi-FI/Kansalaishavainnot)

Recording and preserving natural organisms  

Knowledge of species is one of the important cornerstones of the education for knowledge of nature and sustainable development. As knowledge of species develops, we learn to appreciate biodiversity. What you don’t know, you can’t appreciate.

The Finnish core curriculum of basic education requires students from the fifth grade onwards to compile a collection of organisms. This task has expanded and diversified from gathering plants and creating herbarium into gathering a collection of organisms, according to the student’s own interests. For many decades, collection of plants has been compiled by pressing plants and making dry samples. It’s still an excellent and often intergenerational project. The idea in and the aim of a collection of organisms is recording and saving information about  nature for current and future use.

Digital leap in nature observation

Digitalization has enabled new dimensions in the compilation of a collection of organisms. Almost everybody carry around phone cameras everywhere they go, which makes it possible to take high quality pictures of observable objects. New image recognition applications are tools that make it possible to learn quickly and develop in identification of species.

Citizen observation software and platforms invite us all to take part in doing citizen science. This is how the ownership and relevance of learning develops. Learners become members of the scientific community and the value of their observations increases. To serve this purpose, citizen observation should be included in the everyday learning of every school.

How is it done?

Teachers create special environments where their students can download their observations to a digital platform (e.g. iNaturalist, see below). Students’ observations can be made use of as citizen observations and, at the same time, they are stored in the database of the Finnish Biodiversity Info Facility (https://laji.fi/). The teacher should have a possibility to check and approve students’ observations before their publication.

Teachers take part in training sessions dealing with the use of the digital environment. Besides subject teachers also class teachers and kindergarten teachers are encouraged to take on species identification and lower the threshold for exploring nature. Species identification programs are of great help in this.

With who?

Teachers start work with their own groups of students. When necessary and preferably, they can get guidance from Finnish Biodiversity Info Facility, Biology and geography teachers union (https://peda.net/yhdistykset/bmol-ry), different universities and Metsähallitus (a state-owned enterprise, responsible for the management of one third of Finland’s surface area) (https://www.metsa.fi/web/en). Also The Finnish Agency for Education (EDUFI) might have a guiding vision for this.

International iNaturalist platform (https://www.inaturalist.org/) together with the Finnish Biodiversity Info Facility make the basis for the citizen science projects. iNaturalist serves as an observation platform for all people interested in the topic and offers a low threshold opportunity to participate. Embedded in iNaturalist there is artificial intelligence app helping the identification of different organisms. This supports the observers in developing their knowledge of species. However, schools need a version where the teacher can act as a monitor of observations and a supervisor of the work.

Concerns about the state of the Baltic Sea environment

Baltic Sea Project a.k.a. UNESCO BSP was established on the initiative of the Finnish UNESCO Commission in Helsinki in April 1989. The project involves educational institutions from Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia and Finland. The goal of the Baltic Sea Project is to increase the awareness of the state of the Baltic Sea environment among students and teachers and help understand scientific, social and cultural aspects of the interdependence of man and nature.
Read more about UNESCO BSP: https://unesco-bsp.blogspot.com/

Baltic Sea Day on August 27 2020

One of the themes in BSP is internationalization at home, in which the observation of one’s own vicinity and sharing information with others are considered very important. Citizen science brings interesting new dimensions into this.

Within Baltic Sea Project Citizen Science program teachers and other actors are being trained to use iNaturalist platform. Additionally, there will be BioBlitz competition on Baltic Sea Day on August 27 2020, during which citizens of the Baltic Sea countries will observe as many species as possible. Hopefully many teacher and their student will take part in the BioBlitz.

More information about Baltic Sea Day: https://itameripaiva.fi/en/
More information about Bio Blitz -competition: https://unesco-bsp.blogspot.com/2020/05/bioblitz-around-baltic-sea-on-27th-of.html 

Jussi Tomberg
project coordinator
Towards Year 2030 -project