At the first workshop meeting on January 24, 2023 at the University of Graz, Petra Siegele, head of the OeAD Center for Citizen Science, gave a presentation on "Citizen Science and Schools" to researchers and students. She presented the activities of the center and gave insights into experiences as well as tips for successful planning and implementation of citizen science projects with schools.
Afterwards, Lukas Spielhofer, philologist at the Institute of Antiquities, spoke about the Sparkling Science project Latin Inscriptions for Digital and Extracurricular Learning (LIDAL). In addition to school classes, the citizen science project also involves other citizens with the goal of documenting Latin inscriptions. Robert Brodschneider, a zoologist at the Institute of Biology, reported a major success. In his INSIGNIA-EU project, about 80 beekeepers from nine European countries were able to collect a lot of data on pesticides in the environment of their bee colonies.
After the interesting presentations, the participants discussed how to reach citizen scientists and how to recognize their contributions. The most important statements were captured in a graphic recording by student Caroline Kunesch.
Our sincere thanks go to our citizen science contact person Hildrun Walter for the invitation and the great organisation of the event.
The next citizen science workshop is scheduled for late May/early June, hosted by the Botanical Garden in Graz.