Become a Citizen Scientist - 10 views

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  #1 Jarrad Long on 24 Mar 12

   

  http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20110506_DMI/index.php?startid=10
  
  (I'm doing mobile phone crowd-sourcing)
  
  This article describes a suite of participatory sensing apps developed at UCLA that allow participants to upload data about their surroundings to a central database.
  
  Written in a popularist style for a lay audience, and unashamedly promoting the UCLA apps, this article could be seen as evidence that research in the field of mobile crowd-sourcing, which in the past has been the stuff of academic papers, is beginning to manifest as something seductive and consumable.
  
  One app described in the article is What's Invasive! which allows hikers in the Santa Monica Mountains Park to take photos of plants they identify as invasive, tag the photo with the name of the plant, and upload it to a server that displays the data gathered by all participants. Another example given is What's Noisy! which uses the phone's microphone to gather information about noise levels, in much the same way as the noisemap app described in my chosen article. These apps, as well as the others in the suite, are available for anyone to download from the Android Marketplace.
  
  Interestingly, the article implies that the only motivation for users of these apps is an altruistic one - the furthering of science. In other words, the participants must have a shared motivation. In the case of What's Invasive! they require some scientific knowledge too, in order to correctly identify invasive plants. These requirements, which inevitably limit participation to a select group, are at odds with mobile crowd-sourcing examples in all other articles I've read, which favour quantity over quality and rarely require much specialised knowledge on behalf of the user.
  
  Rather than conclude that the UCLA apps aren't proper examples of mobile crowd-sourcing, this article has led me to question what parameters need to be placed around issues of quantity and quality in mobile crowd-sourcing - something that could warrant further analysis in the next assignment.
  
  Kim, K. (2011) Become a Citizen Scientist. Imagine Magazine by John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth pages 10-13: USA

   

  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner"><a href="http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20110506_DMI/index.php?startid=10" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20110506_DMI/index.php?startid=10</a> <br /> <br /> (I'm doing mobile phone crowd-sourcing) <br /> <br /> This article describes a suite of participatory sensing apps developed at UCLA that allow participants to upload data about their surroundings to a central database. <br /> <br /> Written in a popularist style for a lay audience, and unashamedly promoting the UCLA apps, this article could be seen as evidence that research in the field of mobile crowd-sourcing, which in the past has been the stuff of academic papers, is beginning to manifest as something seductive and consumable. <br /> <br /> One app described in the article is What's Invasive! which allows hikers in the Santa Monica Mountains Park to take photos of plants they identify as invasive, tag the photo with the name of the plant, and upload it to a server that displays the data gathered by all participants. Another example given is What's Noisy! which uses the phone's microphone to gather information about noise levels, in much the same way as the noisemap app described in my chosen article. These apps, as well as the others in the suite, are available for anyone to download from the Android Marketplace. <br /> <br /> Interestingly, the article implies that the only motivation for users of these apps is an altruistic one - the furthering of science. In other words, the participants must have a shared motivation. In the case of What's Invasive! they require some scientific knowledge too, in order to correctly identify invasive plants. These requirements, which inevitably limit participation to a select group, are at odds with mobile crowd-sourcing examples in all other articles I've read, which favour quantity over quality and rarely require much specialised knowledge on behalf of the user. <br /> <br /> Rather than conclude that the UCLA apps aren't proper examples of mobile crowd-sourcing, this article has led me to question what parameters need to be placed around issues of quantity and quality in mobile crowd-sourcing - something that could warrant further analysis in the next assignment. <br /> <br /> Kim, K. (2011) Become a Citizen Scientist. Imagine Magazine by John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth pages 10-13: USA</div>

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