all right we'd like to welcome everybody
to our midday at the Oasis webinar today
my name is Kelli Ham I am the community
engagement librarian at NNLM Pacific
Southwest region and today's webinar is
citizen science day 2019 add real
scientific research to your library
programming
today is February 20th 2019 and we're
very happy to bring this webinar to you
today I'm going to go to our next slide
oops sorry wrong one all right so we're
just about to get started
today our presenters are Darlene
Cavalier who is from the school for the
future of innovation in society at the
Arizona State University and also with
SciStarter dan Stanton with Arizona
State University in SciStarter also and
Pietro Michelucci and I hope I
pronounced your your name correctly on
Pietro he is the executive director of
the human computation Institute and so
now I'm going to turn it over to Darlene
Cavalier go ahead Darlene thank you for
the introduction Kelli and it's
wonderful to be here I am calling in
from Philadelphia Pennsylvania based in
Philly and I spent a lot of time in
Arizona where I work mostly with citizen
science and more with citizen science
through libraries thank you so much to
Kelli and NNLM Pacific Southwest Region
for making it possible for us not just
to talk about and share these resources
but to develop them and make them
sustainable and move of all the programs
that we're doing to help really support
libraries at community hubs for citizen
science
okay so we know through this work that
libraries absolutely can become hubs and
help connect if they people to real
science they can do and we emphasize
those real science in the sense that we
are aware that our wonderful stem
programs thanks technology and area math
program offered through libraries are
you distinguishing factor with citizen
science is that citizen science actually
advances research and I'll give you some
examples here some of the work that
we're currently doing with libraries
primarily in Maricopa County Arizona
we're working with six public libraries
right now you could walk into these
libraries and actually find some citizen
science kits in circulation there are
some examples of what's in those kits
and you can see these are cards that
patrons would find at a library and take
to the take to the reference desk to ask
the check out okay one of the kits helps
people measure light pollution and it
includes a dark sky meter another one
helps to in search for zombies Vee
these are otherwise healthy honeybees
that have been infected by flies
to light trap in that kit and the other
one allows people to explore
biodiversity by using clip-on magnifying
glasses that are ideal for mobile
devices and tablets and then uploading
the information to different apps
including a naturalist you can learn
more about those projects and those kits
at SciStarter dot org forward slash library
we do a number of initiatives with
entire school districts for example
Broward County School District offers
citizen science to their middle schools
as part of their project based learning
and through SciStarter they're able to
help guide the progress of students who
have been assigned different projects
and then at the district level the
district gets to really see the
collective impact that their student
population has had on citizen science
research projects and we do all that
through analytics that were developed
with support the National Science
Foundation very similar process for
universities including North Carolina
State University
where all faculty and students
authenticate into SciStarter to find
projects that have been assigned to them
and then the faculty can track the
progress and support students across a
continuum of engagement we work very
closely with the Girl Scouts of USA so
from a young age most of this is to just
basically demonstrate that there's a lot
of different age ranges and different
types of projects
ways engaging in research in this case
with the Girl Scouts fairly young they
come over to SciStarter with their
troops they select projects to do
together as a troop then they take
action on those projects and a
organizational level the Girl Scouts of
USA is able to see how frequently troops
and councils are engaged in what types
of projects and to better understand if
that interest and engagement in citizen
science continues even after the girls
earn their badge we do this because we
care about citizen science and we care
about science someone you know is a
citizen scientist this little image on
the left here represents eBird eBird is
an application that enables birders in
particular to organize their
observations of birds that they see and
in doing so they agree to share their
data with ornithologist and other
scientists so this case 1.5 million
reports were submitted in January alone
in the center aisle they're the center
lane you see an image with a water
quality tester these are people who
volunteer to monitor our nation's rivers
streams and lakes and oceans there are
an estimated 1.5 million people who
volunteer to do that and then on the
right
other types of citizen science this is
where people download software to
basically use up your computer spare
processing time to help scientists check
for signs of life
out and beyond Earth
our goal is to work with librarians to
really help make research more efficient
and we do this because we know that the
power of the volunteers known as citizen
scientists absolutely advances
scientific research there's a lot of
other benefits that come as a result of
being involved in citizen science
projects we have a link at the end of
this presentation where you can find a
new report from the National Academies
that talks more about the learning
outcomes of citizen science as well and
how it can be empowering as well it
tells it now to my colleague dan Stanton
hi everyone my name is Dan Stanton I'm a
librarian at Arizona State University
and I am very pleased to be able to to
share some of the cool resources that
are that have been developed for
specifically for libraries and
librarians with regards to citizen
science Arizona State University and
SciStarter have been working on
citizen science and libraries for a
couple of years now about a year and a
half and what you see before you is the
soon to be available
librarians guide to citizen science and
we've shared some of the resources and
best practices that we have found in our
work and in partnering up with other
folks so it takes you from the lessons
we've learned in the past couple years
right up to citizen science day 2019 and
you'll see that there's a lot of
information about programming and
accessing resources and overall just a
great guide for
moving forward with introducing your
yourself and your staff to citizen
science and this year is a big step for
citizen science days you can see this is
the fifth annual citizen science day
presented by the citizen science
Association and SciStarter I've been
involved for a couple of years and I'm
it's it's amazing to me to realize that
up until a couple of years ago I did not
know what citizen science is and so the
word has been getting out there and this
citizen science day keeps growing every
year so this year we're going to be
celebrating the work of citizen
scientists and diversity of citizen
science projects around the world and
most of all we're encouraging the public
to get involved and connecting people
through the power of citizen science and
building that sense of community through
the library which is the center of our
communities so some of the resources
that you'll have available to introduce
citizen science to your library into
your community are available on the
citizen science Day webpage from size
start org we all know that you know
information is good about a project like
citizen science but useful resources are
even better and there are a lot of
useful resources to assist you in making
your introduction to citizen science and
and hosting of citizen science day
events easier and more productive some
of the things
we have our the librarians guide to
citizen science that I mentioned before
the SciStarter citizen science day
website SciStarter has access to over
3,000 citizen science projects and so
you can search for citizen science
projects in your area or area of
interest you can find what other
projects are going on in your area a
calendar and a map we want to make sure
that you add your events on there and
they will be out there nationally for
people to see and to find you and then
also a people finder because there are
lots of people who are involved in
citizen science in your area that you
may not be aware of and so if you need
volunteers if you need experts this is a
great resource for you to use it was
just about a year ago that we started
our our cooperation with Kelli and the
national network of the library of
medicine's in our pilot project here in
Maricopa County we wanted to to host
something on citizen science day we
didn't have our projects down yet and so
we created some resources and some
displays in our public libraries and
asked people to contribute and to
discuss with us what their areas of
interest were for citizen science and
this is an example of one of the
resources that will be available to you
you can download this template and buy
some post-it notes and have folks let
you know what areas they are interested
in
with citizen science and then again we
have a lot of a lot of folks behind
citizen science and so we have we're
backed up and supported by professional
organizations scientists government
agencies and advocacy groups which have
specializations and a lot of knowledge
in this area some of these folks have
been doing it for quite a while and it's
it's great to be able to tap into these
resources to help you along when you're
when you're just getting started and
lastly the mega thong this is it this is
what brings it all together for this
year and we're very pleased that with
your interest in this event and so you
can see that the mega thon has a
potential to bring together thousands of
people on a single day to answer and do
real research that could lead to
promising results in Alzheimer's
research and I just want to point out
that the the URL there that will you'll
be seeing again is mega thon us that is
that will take you to the mega thon site
and I am going to turn this over to
Pietro who will go into detail about the
cool project that is the stall catchers
mega thon and here we do before we do
that I'd like to interrupt for just one
second hold on one moment I'm going to
be changing a few things on our
interface here there was a question in
the chat about the resources the
downloading of the posters and so forth
and right now it still says that the
resources are coming soon could can you
say when those resources will be
available yes they'll be available
Friday
okay like - okay great and um and I hope
that's okay I didn't ask Dan and Darlene
if I could show this photograph but
there's a photograph that I took of them
last year in Arizona and it shows the
picture of the poster with the it's
possible that you can purchase these
post-it notes that are in the shape of a
leaf so it turned out perfectly for the
poster and this is just an example of a
of a poster and display with your
citizen science book so I thought I
would show that before we actually turn
it over to Pietro green on thank you
okay and now it's and now it's time for
Pietro okay so I'm just wondering if if
I can purchase a postcard of that photo
yeah I want to have that on my wall
that's that's great
so yeah thanks for the great
introduction to stall catchers Dan my
name is Pietro Michelucci lead computation
Institute which is basically a Research
Institute that that studies and and
build supercomputers made out of humans
and machines connected by the internet
and and so we started the eyes on Al's
project with support from bright focus
foundation as one such initiative and
and through that project we created a
game called stall catchers
so before before I tell you anything
more about the Megaman or saucers I
wonder Marco if you could play that
video that we set up if that's available
if now we can
- till the end if it's not ready Pietro
would you be able to drag the presenter
ball back to Marco oh sure a tree and I
did grab a bit I fell back so I'm going
to go ahead and share that file with you
all
so thanks for thanks for watching that
worth listening to it that was of if
you're just on the phone that was a
video clip from from one team's video
feed during during an international
event that we do every year called the
catches on and in the Quecha thon we
have teams from all six continents for
many different countries all
participating that was a team from from
Lithuania and and and as you can see
there's a lot of there's a lot of
excitement during this very intense
one-hour period of playing playing the
stock etchers game so this is the first
year that we're that we're going to
bring this kind of event to citizen
science day and and and so because we we
like to outdo ourselves with each new
event we're going big so instead of
calling it a catcheth on it's going to
be a mega thon and and our goal in this
event is going to be to enlist a hundred
thousand participants all during the
exact same hour of the same day to play
stall catchers and to analyze an entire
data set to answer a single research
question in one hour that would take
scientists six months to a year to
answer in the lab so we've previously in
some of these kind of high-intensity
events we've we've managed to accomplish
several weeks of research in one hour
this time we want to accomplish an
entire year's worth of research and and
because of the scaling and the power of
the crowd with with enough participants
actively engaged we think we can do this
so so now I will back up and tell you a
little bit more about what stall
catchers is so stall catchers is an
online game that anyone can play and by
playing the game you help to speed up
Alzheimer's research by analyzing real
research data and and so this is what it
looks like to play the game on a tablet
can be played on a smartphone on a
tablet on a laptop any
internet-connected device and and the
basic idea in the game is is to make a
is to answer a simple question so we
draw a little outline I don't know if
you can see this orange outline around a
blood vessel in the brain of a mouse and
that mouse might or might not have
Alzheimer's disease and it might or
might not have been given a drug
compound that could be a treatment for
Alzheimer's disease and then we're
trying to look at the blood vessel
inside that outline and decide if the
blood is flowing or stalled in that
vessel and I'll explain why we care
about that in a minute so as I mentioned
people who play the game are not being
studied we're not collecting data on
participants to to determine whether or
not they have Alzheimer's disease people
who play you know in the spirit of
citizen science are doing some of the
work of scientists and analyzing this
research data that would otherwise take
a very long time for the scientists to
analyze on their own so by turning it
into a game and making it into kind of a
fun activity and sometimes a competitive
activity we get a lot of work done in a
much shorter period of time so so why do
we care about looking at these little
blood vessels we've known since the
beginning of Alzheimer's disease that
there's 30% less blood flow in the brain
of an Alzheimer's patient than in a
healthy brain but we've never understood
why until very recently so my Institute
works closely with Cornell University
and in particular
are there there biomedical engineering
department where some scientists there
discovered that that the source of this
reduced blood flow is stalled
capillaries in the brain
so in other words these very tiny blood
vessels in the brain actually stop
flowing and when you compare healthy
mice to my suit that have been given the
the human version of Alzheimer's disease
and manifest all the cognitive symptoms
of the disease and the hallmark amyloid
plaques that you see post mortem those
mice have a much higher rate of stalled
capillaries than the healthy mice and
and what the researchers found is that
when they introduced a compound into
these mice with the Alzheimer's that
released the stalls that the mice
actually got their memory back and their
depression went away the problem is that
that the drug they introduced to
accomplish that actually compromises the
immune system of the mice and and it's
not a sustainable treatment it would
eventually kill the mouse and if it were
given to a human it would kill the human
so so what we have is sort of a
mechanism that can alleviate cognitive
symptoms potentially slow the
progression of the disease but we need
to find a way to invoke that mechanism
that doesn't harm the organism and
that's the purpose of this research
tract that's supported by stall catchers
so when people play stall catchers
they're helping to advance that specific
line of research so the the way this
works is that the the scientists to boil
it down will take a compound that
potentially makes these stalled vessels
start flowing again and that's hopefully
safer and give it to the mice and then
someone actually has to take a picture
of all these blood vessels in the brain
so they take this 3d image of the mouse
brain and then they send it over to
stall catchers and then we have to go in
and actually look at
each individual blood vessel and figure
out if it's flowing or stalled and count
the number of stalls that's the only way
to know if this drug compound is
actually making a difference and so
previously before stall catchers came
along every new compound they wanted to
try would take six to twelve months to
test now with the power of the crowd
we're doing this four to five times
faster than in the lab that means that
we can test a new compound every two
months or so and what we're proposing to
do in the mega Chthon of course is to
test a compound in one hour which would
be completely unprecedented so again a
hundred thousand people we want to get a
million annotations so a million sounds
like a lot but if you have a hundred
thousand people playing that's only ten
per person and you can do ten if you're
an experienced player you can do ten in
about five minutes so so I think you
know even if we don't get a full hundred
thousand people playing I think this is
um this is a evil goal and and so at the
end of the event so we'll have everyone
connected via livestream on video so
people can participate from home they
can participate as part of a meet-up at
a library and if you're at a library and
you have a video feed then we'll pop in
and we'll visit you during the event and
and you know we like to create this real
sense of connectedness so everyone can
see everybody playing we'll say you know
hey where are you what's your library's
name and show the crowd playing the game
and and when we've done this with the
international catches on it's just an
amazing feeling to know that we're all
kind of crossing ideological boundaries
and political boundaries and state
boundaries and working toward a common
goal that transcends all those things
because we're all members of the human
species and we're all prone to dementia
so so we want to create this experience
on a grand scale
in the mega thon so so why you know why
take part in the mega thon well so you
don't have to of course and and there
are lots of other citizen science
projects this is only going to be for
part of the
science day and this is this is just one
opportunity to participate but we I
think part of the the the reason we we
thought to try this is because it's kind
of a low-hanging fruit as far as
barriers to entry it's easy to to
register for the game there's an online
kind of walk me through that sort of
just takes your holds your hand through
through the analysis of ten blood
vessels and and at the end you kind of
have your wings and you can play the
game and you can do that from home or
from anywhere there's a video tutorial
to help you and of course the all the
reasons for doing citizen science in the
first place you get a chance to
participate in real science and the mega
thon you'll be able to track live how
much your you or your team are
contributing to the research at the end
there will be a real research outcome
will have the Cornell scientists on hand
to interpret the results of the analysis
and and explain to us you know how the
the outcome of the Magath on gets us
closer to an Alzheimer's treatment to
say well you know what is the the real
substantive impact of this on the
research and put it in terms that we can
we can really understand and we're going
to go for a world record I don't know if
there's a Guinness category that exactly
fits this but but certainly if we
accomplish this we will be setting a
world record in terms of you know
biomedical participatory science so you
know we're very excited about all all
these possibilities and you know one one
great aspect of this game is is that we
we've had you know children as young as
six years old play it we one of our
super catchers someone who is our
community calls themselves catchers and
and one of our super catchers was an 85
year old woman who whose goal was always
be in the top 20 on the leaderboard and
and and she and she certainly maintained
that that level of play
so so it's intergenerational anyone can
play it and and so far it seems like
people really really have fun doing it
so you know we would encourage you if
you're interested in in potentially
bringing this into your library to
actually go to MegaFon us and sign up
you know it's it's it's it's basically a
simple registration page you put in your
email address you put in a user name and
you'll not only get signed up for stall
catchers and and get an email with with
links about with more information about
the mega thon but you will also get
signed up on SciStarter so it's kind of
a quick and easy way to get into this
loop and and and to you know be stay
informed about what's going on in
addition to you know this this weekly
librarian working group meeting that we
have and then the only other thing that
I thought I would mention is if you do
sign up that you explore the team
creation feature because what you can do
is actually go in and create a team for
your library that's named after your
library you can put your library logo on
it or you can put you know Donald Duck
on it you could put whatever you want
and and then you can invite others to
join that team either either library
patrons or colleagues and and we're
going to start I'm announcing this for
the first time here and now starting
tomorrow we're going to have a Thursday
league night so we actually have a
league mechanism and when you create a
team there's this opportunity to join
your team to a league and I think
someone just added it to the chat it'll
be every Thursday night from 7 p.m. to 9
p.m. Pacific time which is a bit late
for the East Coasters 10:00 p.m. to
midnight but if you're up for it
come and play stall catchers during that
time on a team and and then you'll be
part of a kind of a challenge
leaderboard which you'll be able to see
right in the in the main interface and
you can compete against other library
teams and I think it's a great way to
kind of get used to the game and warm-up
for the Mega thon and by the time the
Agathon rolls around you may have
aggregated kind of a community of
players on your team and some of those
people might want to show up and be part
of your local Meetup and others might
want to play from home but it's a very
flexible system and and and if you need
any help if you have any questions about
it please feel free to reach out to us
and they're mechanisms in the interface
to that explain how to do that so please
go to megaphone us and register and I
hope you give it a try and and of course
I'm happy to answer any questions and I
think I'm now going to turn it back over
I have to drag this little ball over to
Darlene okay cue patreon it was great
thank you so much and you can see this
next slide is just a reminder that every
Wednesday except this one at 4:00
o'clock Eastern Time Caroline
Nickerson who you can see adding some
messages and chat there and Pietro host
an open weekly call it's especially I
think helpful for librarians if you're
thinking about getting involved in
citizen science day I think these are
very helpful it's a good opportunity to
ask any questions that you might have
and in fact your questions are used to
create an FAQ so is it it's a really
good opportunity to learn about citizen
science today understand how to get
involved reminders of how to access some
of the resources we're about to show you
online here and in particular there's
great support for hosting a mega thon
okay let's see here
like you get to the next back so now
we're going to spend a couple minutes
just talking about some of the resources
available to you as librarians and Dan
had mentioned earlier that SciStarter
has more than three thousand citizen
science projects and events from all
different types of science disciplines
basically what we say is if you are
curious or concerned there's a project
in need of your help and remember all of
these projects aim to advance areas of
scientific research so 3,000
that can be done almost anywhere by
anyone any time of year the way to use
Scistarter is to use project finder and
there's a couple of different ways to
use it you can use the mini project
finder which is on the home page and
that's like starter and there you can
click that little orange triangle there
that says find a location and it will
pick up your location where you are
you're exactly where you are and then
you can have the option of also
selecting relevant topics and then you
click find project and you'll find all
the things in your area the other way is
to use an advanced search and this way
you can select the appropriate audience
so you might be looking for projects
that are great for senior citizens or
relevant for families or youngster in
you can find them that way if you're
working with educators there's a way to
look for projects that have classroom
materials another thing we have there is
where you see all activities that's kind
of neat one because you can search for
projects that can be done in various
settings on a height while sping things
like that and then of course you can
enter a word or a phrase this I would
recommend if you're looking for projects
that go along with programs that you
already have in place or themes that you
have coming up with summer reading time
for example just type in the word that
you're looking for maybe that maybe that
space exploration and you'll find all
the projects that can be done related to
that topic you can also embed the
project finder on your website and all
of this is free thanks to the National
Science Foundation you can embed the
project finder on your website using
some of the tools we make it easy for
you to find the tools as well but
probably the easiest thing is to look at
the links that are in the footer of Sci-
Starter dot org there's you know information
and instructions on how to invent the
project finder on your site for example
and you can make them look like your
website so it doesn't have to say Sci-
Starter and half that use our colors or
our font you can select the type
a project that you want to show up on
your own project finder PBS uses it with
the so called side girls
to enable girls to find projects that
can be done in the United States
that are active and that are relevant to
their age group it's more examples of
how others use the projects under
actually there's the URL there at the
bottom it's an example of how the
scigirls uses it so you can see you can
just customize it as you see fit
here's the links to recent projects that
we've talked about during this during
this presentation as well as links to
the kits that I showed you earlier
those kits were designed so that they
could be there's a build borrow buy
option for those kits in case you wanted
to get them into your own library and I
would recommend as one of your next
steps is to not hesitate to reach out to
us at SciStarter and that's betting Dan
Caroline myself and we can help you
access these resources we can help you
from a technical standpoint if you have
any questions about digitally embedding
any of these codes you need help
customizing some of the posters and I
think you're really going to love the
new posters that we're going to post on
the site on Friday they're just they're
beautiful posters and the bookmarks and
buttons and flyers and a wonderful
librarians guide to citizen science all
those things if you're looking for help
to just customize those we can help
there when you come up with an event or
if you already have an event certainly
register on the mega thon site if you're
doing a mega thon and then be sure to
add your event to Scistarter and it's
all at the side start org slash citizen
- science - day site you'll see how you
can add your event there and that way
people can find it and we'll help
recruit people - to show up at your
event - if you need help finding a
volunteer to help you organize the event
as know we have a list of people who
have you know signed up to be what we
call ambassadors so these are people who
would help go to your library you know
kind of do a test run the day or two
before make sure that you have enough
computers that you have that the Wi-Fi
is working be there to answer questions
about the mega zone install catchers a
day of so take us up on that happy to
help find that especially Caroline her
email is listed there in the chat again
we can help you recruit participants for
this if you through haven't post the
magaz on and in general help you
continue to sustain citizen science in
your library
and there's lots and lots of different
ways to do that and I think that might
be our last slide other than to thank
again and NLM and Kelli in particular
for her support of this work and I'm
hoping that we might have some time here
for some QA Kelli would that be okay yes
we have 20 minutes left so we have
plenty of time for Q&A and I would first
like to just thank all of our presenters
this is so exciting and it's fun to see
some of the different possibilities I
want to mention to everyone the slides
are going to be available probably by
Friday on the link that mark will put in
the chat and we'll all of the the
resources that are on those slides
you'll be able to access them you know
just by pulling pulling down the slides
and having those links so are if there
are questions you can either put them in
the chat I'm not sure if you'll be able
to unmute yourself or not we that I'm
not sure if we can do or not but please
do put your questions in the chat box
and Marco are we able to are people able
to unmute themselves if they have a
question they can raise their hands and
I can unmute them unfortunately if I am
mute everybody you'll hear a lot of
noise oh okay okay so if you want to
raise your hand as a if you have a
question or just put it in the chat and
then we can answer your questions that
way I do want to mention a few things to
the national network of libraries of
medicines so that would be nnlm.gov we
are a regional network and all of the
different regions around the country
will also be good support resources for
you so if you are interested in
exploring ideas for programs if you're
interested in applying for funding there
there may be opportunities for you
coming up for citizen science projects
in your own region if you need to know
how to find your region you I'll put the
link in the chat when you go to the NLM
gov website you would then click on your
individual region you can pull up the
map of the regional map and see where
you're located and then that would take
you to the contact information for your
own region let's see we do have a couple
of entries in the chat box yep so I see
a question from looks like Thea Hart who
says I've been trying to play style
catchers and I'm finding it kind of
tricky
I keep getting things wrong during the
test drive it seems ideal to have some
practice before the mega thon and do you
have any suggestions for making sure
everyone practices before coming to the
citizen science mega fun if we were to
house one at our library so I think
that's a great question and I think it
raises a really
keypoint about star catchers so one of
the things that we do install catchers
is because we need very high quality
data we take the same vessel and we show
it to several different people and we
combine answers for many different
people so if one person happens to get
it wrong one time and another person
gets it wrong the other time we
validated our methods so we know with
the confidence that we need that no
matter how many mistakes any individual
makes that the system is going to self
calibrate and give us very high quality
results so it's perfectly fine to make
mistakes everyone may I make mistakes my
my colleagues teach me because I'm not
very good catcher I and and some people
find it easier than others but I think I
think that so it's it's fine to make
mistakes and and and that might not ever
entirely go away but I think the value
in practicing is just getting familiar
with the game itself so you know how to
play it and you don't have to figure out
okay how do I register you know how do I
see how I'm doing in the game on the day
of the mega thon and and I think if the
question is you know how do you
encourage people to practice I think
that's the idea behind these these
Thursday night league challenges that
we're going to hold so anyone who if you
create a team install catchers for your
library and you you join your team to
that leak which is right on the team
creation page basically there's your
team name your team logo and then you
pick what league you want to be in if
you want to be in a league so you pick
the league and then anyone who joins
your team is automatically going to be
participating and showing up in the
leaderboards for that challenge so it's
it's every Thursday night I think it was
I think that the time was 7 p.m. to 9
p.m. Pacific time and you don't have to
play during that time you could hold
practice meetups anytime you want but
but that's a way to sort of be involved
in sort of a mini competition that gets
people a sense of oh this is what it's
going to be like to do the megaphone
and also teacher I think that's what
that first hour is for or the first half
hour correct summary of the actual Vegas
on is to get people on boarded and train
so they feel pretty comfortable that's
right
I mean I think if you start with a
hundred people in a room who have never
seen the game before then getting them
all ramped up and a half hour you might
end up with a few stragglers and and
that's not a big deal I'm so I mean
we've we've run you know international
catches ons where people where where
most of the people have shown up for the
first time on the day of and and
sometimes people are kind of getting the
hang of it halfway through and that's
okay they're still participating and by
the end of it they've made a substantial
contribution so yeah I don't think it's
it's not a requirement to have done it
before but I think it does kind of ease
some of that that day of Bergen so that
this one one answer there is that maybe
it's not the end-all but you're these
just Megaton starts a half hour before
we actually start clocking that
participation and that is designed to
just unborn people too and give give
some practices their future what kind of
devices can you play the game on yep so
it can be played on any
internet-connected device laptop tablet
or smartphone for me smart the
smartphone is a little small to try to
look at those blood vessels so I prefer
either a tablet or a laptop a great
question I think this one is probably
for and and this question is do we plan
to develop different resources dedicated
to research libraries and to public
libraries for more may be interested in
scientific outcomes while the latter
could be interested in learning outcomes
own citizen science yeah so in terms of
what we're doing where we are kind of
expanding now on all fronts at Arizona
State University we have a group of
faculty members
and grad students who are interested in
doing research with citizen science and
so right now we're kind of exposing them
to the public library site to let them
know that you know you you have these
these community centers willing and able
to assist in collecting your data there
are reliable and available there so
we're we're trying to match them those
up together and as we had mentioned I
think on one of Darlene's earlier slides
North Carolina State University has a
public science faculty cluster that does
research of which citizen Sciences is a
big part of that and the library at
North Carolina State University works
with them as well to host campus-wide
citizen science project each spring so
they're developing projects like that
that you know are certainly open to you
know being being shared and modeled at
other universities as well and there are
also a lot of citizen scientists out
there who aren't affiliated with
libraries but are in communities in
local government in local educational
organizations in state and local parks
and so all of these folks are are
looking for ways to do this and and you
know the the partnership opportunities
are there and we're trying to again to
to get these people to to come together
great thank you
lots of questions for about I guess
pretty much
capacity of participants to internet
bandwidth and and I can't tell actually
Pietro and is it Megan Robin if you're
saying the same thing
or if you are saying two different
things I see a note from Robin here that
keeps dropping down let's say I think
we're saying slightly different things
go let's Claire
this question comes up a lot yep yep you
bet so so I think if I remember right
because I think you know Robin we talked
about this a bit so she did some some
real-world testing which is great and
found that if you're using a hotspot
that is if someone brings their
smartphone in and they they open up
their hotspot to a few other people in
the room that they could actually have
five people playing off the same
cellphone connection to the Internet so
that's I think that's separate from
using Wi-Fi that's if if you're trying
to sort of divide and conquer you know
if you have a room full of a hundred
people and you're afraid your Wi-Fi
won't handle every one then you could
ask people to set up some some of their
own you know personal hotspots but with
a Wi-Fi connection you know we think
that that you know just kind of in this
is you know theory and practice aren't
always exactly the same but in theory
you know streaming one YouTube video
uses about the same bandwidth as ten
people playing stall catchers the stall
cats each time you look at a new blood
vessel it's loading a very short video
and then you kind of you examine that
video so in it and and people tend to
take about 30 seconds per turn so based
on that you know we think that most you
know library wi-fi's would accommodate a
normal sized classroom of people playing
do participate to the mega thon need to
have an account yeah you need to be
signed up install catchers you don't
have to you don't have to specifically
say
you know join me to the Magath on there
as long as you're playing stall catchers
at that moment on that day you're going
to be participating in the mega thon and
and it doesn't matter whether you
registered a month ahead where you
register for Starcatchers at that moment
Pietro would it help to show the the
website is there anything that you'd
like to show we can either have you
share your screen or I could do it and
you could walk me through where you'd
like people to see yeah why if you don't
mind could you do it and I'll walk you
through it because that way we sign up
one more person
sure so um let's see see if I can share
my screen okay are you able to see that
yeah okay tell me tell me what you'd
like me to show okay so the first thing
I want to point out before you put in
any information is Chauncey says join
the mega thon and then there's this
little text next to it that says what is
it well so if you come here and you say
well I don't really completely get what
this is yet click on that go ahead and
do that and it'll scroll you down to the
bottom of the screen and give you kind
of an overview what the goals are and
then there are some links here with more
resources librarians guide a teacher's
guide someone who just wants to organize
a meet-up at a Starbucks for anyone who
just wants to participate as individuals
so lots of options there I'd like to
show what the for librarians link looks
like just so people can see what they
will find when they come here
so lots of great information
specifically for librarians but if
you're also working with if you have a
partnership with your school you'll be
sure to let them know that this is
happening and maybe you can have have a
joint team or something like that so
I'll go back and some of the other other
links yeah thank you that's great and
yeah and speaking of schools it sounded
like one of our
recent calls someone was thinking of
opening up their school on a Saturday to
students for for this so yet why don't
we go ahead and have you sign up so go
ahead and make up a username you can be
incognito or there you go KelliCatchers
that's great and then so you know I
might I'm not sure if I have used my my
work email address or not I'll try it
okay I may already be signed up and then
I ya then depending on which one of
these you can click more than one option
so you can be a librarian you can be a
student you can be if you're already
playing stock catchers then you can
click that and it lets us know to that
that you want to get information about
the megaphone but you're already
registered in stock catchers ok for
purposes of this should I uncheck that
yeah go ahead and uncheck it we'll see
what happens and then sign up and then
you're going to get signed up for stall
catchers we're SciStarter and you'll
get information about the Magath on now
you can click get back to stock headers
so that tells me that it sort of
recognized that you might already be a
stock at your player and ok so I thought
it would kick you right into the game so
why don't you go ahead and try to login
then ok you have an existing account
I'll get yours if you were doing it for
the first time you would have
automatically started playing the game
but I think because you're a
pre-existing user then you just need to
login
I'll see if this works ok
I should have done this beforehand to
make sure that I could get in okay there
we are
looks like you're in excellent so you
can see there's this online this
real-time chat on the right side and we
have some of our frequent players
bantering with each other there anyone
can can chat on there although for for
school school classrooms we're going to
limit it so they can only talk the
students can only talk to each other
just to protect minors so if you want to
to minimize that chat box it will be
easier to see the game itself and right
so now you're already playing the game
it looks like you already did that
initial walkthrough where it guides you
step-by-step through some different
examples so now you would just take that
green dot and scroll it back and forth
and and then you can sort of see there's
a blood vessel inside that orange
outline sometimes you'll see more than
one but it's the one that follows the
shape of the outline that you're
concerned with and then you're trying to
decide whether blood is flowing through
that vessel so the liquid part is is is
bright white because if there's
something in it to make it light up and
then the black spots are red blood
vessels or
red blood cells okay so in this one do
you well I'm not sure because when I get
to a particular point you know the black
part that we're seeing right at the top
of that I'm wondering if that's a stall
yeah that would that would definitely be
my guess but I've been wrong before okay
so I'm going to click stalled and then
then I click right where I think the
stall is so I'm going up click click
that we'll see what happens
nothing happened yeah it says correct
okay
correct okay 846 point yay that's quite
a lot of points for for one so this is
what happens in the game as you get
better at the game that blue bar on the
right you see there's that little eye
symbol and then a blue bar above it
that's a sensitivity bar and it's kind
of a measure of of your ability to
discriminate between
installed vessels and the bigger that
bar is the more points you get for a
correct answer all right so that's your
incentive and it looks like you've
previously answered about some vessels
where we didn't know the answer yet and
so you can redeem points for four
vessels by clicking that green button
you can get points for vessels you
annotated in a previous session where we
didn't know if you were right or wrong
until we collected enough answers from
other people great great so I do see
that we're we're right up at the end of
our session so we should probably wrap
up the final final bits now let's see I
need to go back to our I'm going to stop
sharing my screen and now we're back at
the at our presentation so Darlene or
Dan or Pietro do you have any final
final words you'd like to say just to
thank everybody for turning out for this
webinar and to definitely take us up on
it if you have any questions about
citizen science or the mega thon or
citizen science day yeah thank you
everyone
yeah thank you so much to all of our
presenters and we're looking forward to
having as many libraries as possible
sign up for the mega zon and participate
in citizen science Day 2019 be sure to
contact your NNLM regional office if
you have additional questions or would
like more information about funding for
projects and ways in which our our
offices can support you and thanks again
to all of our presenters we will be
collecting the information in the chat
box and providing all of those links to
you for all of the people who registered
you'll be getting a reminder of the
recording I believe but you can also go
to that link for the recording later on
and get the PowerPoint slides ok so I
think we'll go ahead and stop the
recording now thank you
all for coming appreciate it thanks
everybody thank you all okay thank you
