It’s cold outside! Stay in with some fun citizen science projects you can do from your living room.
The SciStarter Blog
Even if cold, cloudy weather has you avoiding the outdoors, that doesn’t mean you need to resign yourself to boredom (or Netflix). Hundreds of citizen science projects, advancing research on everything from ancient Egypt to nesting birds, are designed to be done right from home. Here are some to get you started.
Scribes of the Cairo Geniza
Get a first-hand glimpse into the daily lives of citizens of ancient Egypt. By helping to classify and transcribe online images of scrolls from storerooms, or Geniza, you’ll be advancing research into Egyptian society and culture.
Location: Online
Project Sidewalk
Sidewalks around the country can be inaccessible to people with disabilities, whether that’s because of poor design or disrepair. Fixing sidewalks, and allowing everyone access to city streets, starts with cataloging where accessibility issues can be found. Do your part to find them by browsing images online and tagging access issues you spot.
This is our featured project for MLK JR Day of Service. Here’s a recorded interview with the project scientist. Learn how to get involved and ask the scientist anything you want when he joins us for our next SciStarter LIVE event on Zoom (Tuesday Jan. 10 at 2pm ET.) Registration is free, required and now open: Register here.
Location: Online
SciQuest
SciQuest is focused on better understanding the people who participate in citizen science, AKA you!
Take quizzes that ask about your citizen science experience and your perspective on different issues. Researchers use your survey responses to build a better picture of who citizen scientists are. You might just learn something about yourself along the way!
Location: Online
Living with Machines
How did the introduction of machines during the Industrial Revolution change the lives of ordinary people in the 19th century?
Look through pages of newspapers, maps and books online to find records of when, where and how machines were involved in accidents. Your contributions add data to the historical research project while training machine learning algorithms to better search and classify images in the future.
Location: Online
Nest Quest Go
Tree swallows are in serious decline and understanding their nesting patterns is one key to helping to bring these charismatic birds back.
Swoop in and help discover the historical nesting patterns of these acrobatic aerialists by transcribing information on photos of hand-written nest records.
Location: Online
