Our crew here at A Citizen Science Life (ACSL) features me (Sarah), my husband (Greg), our (currently) toddler twin boys (as I affectionately refer to them, Captain Curious and Inspector Inquiry) and our orange tabby cat. Ever since we welcomed the boys into our family, we’ve been thinking a lot about how we hope to engage them in citizen science. Greg and I were brought together in part because of citizen science (ask us how we met sometime) and each have over 10 years of experience working in the citizen science field. So, it’s an obvious next step for us to incorporate the kids into our citizen science activities too.
That, my friends, has led us here, on this journey we’re calling “A Citizen Science Life”. Join us on this journey as we navigate a family life that incorporates citizen science into our everyday activities. We will make a lot of mistakes. We will laugh together. We may, yes, even cry together. But most importantly, we’ll explore the world of citizen science together.
Who is this blog for?
This blog is for anyone looking to incorporate citizen science into their family life. Although my bias as the author of this blog will be as a mother and you’ll occasionally hear Greg’s thoughts as a father, we hope this blog will be useful to you no matter what role you play in your family or what your family structure looks like! We want to encourage you to do citizen science with your friends and family too. We hope this blog will inspire other people to write, share, and talk about their citizen science lives as well.
Citizen science projects exist for nearly every walk of life. I want to hear about your experiences too. If you don’t feel like you see a place for yourself in the world of citizen science, please reach out and share tell me why. I want to hear it – and work with you to figure out how you can be a part of the fun!
Why this blog
As a new parent and an obsessive researcher and reader, I enjoyed learning as much as I could about the projected development of our boys week by week and then month by month during their first year of life. Then they started to get mobile and more curious and I could ‘see’ their little brains a-churning as they discovered new things. I read various parenting blogs and blogs about raising multiples and blogs about kids and nature. All the while, I kept thinking, “There should be a blog out there about raising kids with citizen science”. But there wasn’t. So, I decided to write one myself and that is how “A Citizen Science Life” was born.
Transparency
As I mentioned earlier, Greg and I both have many years of experience working in the field of citizen science. Each of us have degrees in science (me a Masters, him a Masters and a PhD). We both currently work for the online citizen science platform CitSci.org, of which Greg is one of several founders and the current director.
We are both also very active volunteers for the Citizen Science Association, a professional organization for citizen science, based in the U.S. Greg is currently the board chair and both of us contribute to several working groups. When I write about projects that Greg or I have been paid to work for (presently or historically), I will do my best to mention it for purposes of transparency.
Contact Me
You can contact me on Twitter or via the form below. It may take me a few days to respond. My priorities are generally family, paid job, eat, sleep, blog, then email and social media!