Throughout the month of August ABC Science is asking for help with transcribing weather observations from old ships’ log books. We are taking a crowd-sourcing approach to reduce this workload and asking regular folk, students, schools and members of the public, to get involved and help the scientists with their research work.
This crowd-sourcing approach is called ‘citizen science’ – it’s about using the power of the people to increase the breadth of science by gathering or processing information important to a scientific project. Weather Detective is an online citizen science project that is helping scientists at the University of Southern Queensland with their research.
Getting your class involved
Weather Detective is suitable for students from upper primary school onwards. You can enter your class as a school group – you just need an adult to register for Weather Detective, and you also need parental approval to participate.
Once you have this, just sign up and register as a school group with an email address and a password. Students will use these to login and participate. Any number of students can take part at once and, while they work individually, their work will count towards a collective score.