2:00-2:15pm - The Scientists with Stories Project: a media training collaboration for Duke-UNC PhD students - Clare Fieseler
Science communication is an increasingly important component of the broader impact of scientific research projects -- and the grants that fund them. Yet, most science curricula at the PhD level lack formal programs to help young scientists develop the skills needed to communicate via newly dominant mediums of digital communication. This session will describe a new 1-year pilot project between the UNC and Duke marine laboratories. The project’s goal is to provide media training and exhibit platforms for PhD students. Student project leaders welcome discussion on how to create an effective interuniversity program that could secure the project’s survival past the pilot year
2:15-2:30pm - Booles' Rings - Peter Krautzberger
At first sight, it may appear that Booles' Rings is yet-another-blogging-network, running a WordPress multisite installation to host a couple of sites. However, the goal of Booles' Rings is to change the way mathematicians (and other researchers) use their academic homepages: we are developing best practices for using a modern website technology to present and connect our online presences as researchers in the fullest sense. Using WordPress and other open-source tools we incorporate aspects of decentralized social networks hoping to bring the scientific community a tiny step forward towards being an actual community of people: in control of their content and making connections and interactions with other researchers transparent and visible beyond publication metrics. I will demonstrate the features of and ideas for our very young project (beyond the well-known WordPress features) focusing on the potential of WordPress and other decentralized social networking tools.
2:30-2:45pm - Measuring the Ocean Online- Rachel Weidinger and Kieran Mulvaney
How does the ocean measure up in social media? For the first time, aggregate, issue-level benchmarking analysis will be available. A new team will present findings-- including content analysis, keyword trends, and possibly sentiment and influencer analysis-- from project underway to lay down a baseline on the state of ocean conservation conversations on the social web. The goal of the yet unnamed project is to help science-based ocean content providers reach wider audiences with greater impact. Though it'll focus on ocean issues, the benchmarking pattern may be of use in related disciplines.
2:45-3:00pm - Mapping, knowledge sharing, and citizen science on the web using CartoDB - Andrew Hill
CartoDB (http://www.cartodb.com) is an open source, geospatial database on the web that provides storage, simple APIs, and mapping. Using components of CartoDB, we have helped develop a variety of science tools on the web from citizen science projects like OldWeather (http://oldweather.org/) and NEEMO (http://neemo.zooniverse.org/), to knowledge sharing projects like Protected Planet (http://protectedplanet.net/), and science support tools like GeoCAT (http://rlat.kew.org/). Now we would like to share some of CartoDB capabilities as well as discuss some of the lessons we have learned building science tools on the web.
3:00-3:15pm -Break
3:15-3:30pm - OpenHelix Online Apps: Connecting Researchers, Research, Resources and Data - Jennifer Williams
In this session I will discuss online apps for connecting research publications to research data. These apps are designed by OpenHelix in collaboration with publishers such as BioMed Centraland Elsevier that extend the information ecosystem, and function to connect bioscience resources mentioned in journal articles to the actual databases and to training on their usage, and also help readers extract and extend their understanding more easily. I will touch on apps for and on BioMed Central, and for the SciVerse platform from Elsevier, which help researchers access OpenHelix tutorials, as well as data at OMIM, Reactome, and SMART databases.
3:30-3:45pm - Experimonth: One citizen, one scientist, one month at a time - Beck Tench
Experimonth (http://experimonth.lifeandscience.org) is a month-long participatory project that connects citizens, scientists and artists through blogging. From its humble beginnings as food experiments between museum co-workers, hear how this project has evolved to an NSF-funded model for engaging people in using science as a way of knowing about their world. Also learn how we're measuring the project through discourse analysis and how we're expanding it to face-to-face events and exhibits at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC.
3:45-4:00pm - Cachalot: A Scalable, Open Access Digital Textbook for Marine Science - David Johnston
The Digital Sea Monsters Project at Duke University recently developed a digital textbook – called Cachalot - for courses focusing on Marine Megafauna. This textbook integrates the use of text-based, photo, video and audio teaching materials and delivers them to students in a freely downloadable application optimized for the Apple iPad. Cachalot represents a new form of digital textbook, one that is completely open access and populated with current content written by experts in the field. As a textbook, Cachalot sits at the intersection of transformative philosophy (e.g. it is open access and crowd-sourced), pedagogy (e.g. it provides for location independent and just-in-time learning that can fully exploit multimedia) and technology (exploits hand-held devices that integrate computational, communication and visualization capabilities). The app integrates open access journal articles, textbook-style content (including great photos and illustrations), video, audio and animations of animal behavior and anatomy within an annotation interface. Cachalot provides direct access to the experts that contribute to it, and the app incorporates a twitter-based messaging system for students to communicate about course materials. Much of the content in Cachalot is highly accessible to the general public, providing a novel way to educate people about marine science. This application has been developed as a framework, portable to other classes and other purposes.http://superpod.ml.duke.edu/cachalot
4:00-4:15pm - Break
4:15-4:30pm - TechNyou – Building an online teaching community and developing critical thinking in students - Rob Thomas
Robert Thomas from the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research discusses the science education resource www.technyou.edu.au/education, an Australian Government initiative for high school science teachers. The resource provides materials in the fields of biotechnology and nanotechnology, and covers student learning objectives, including creative thinking and effective communication.
4:30-4:45pm - A new way to fundraise for science: the SciFund Challenge - Jai Ranganathan
Can scientists raise money for their research through crowdfunding? In November and December, 49 scientists took the leap in the SciFund Challenge. Find out the lessons that were learned about how research can be funded in this new way.
4:45-5:00pm - Quartzy.com: Accelerating Science with Free Web-Based Lab Management Tools - Adam Regelmann
Quartzy.com launched in 2009, and is quickly becoming the standard way for bench scientists to manage their lab Inventories, Orders, Protocols, and Shared Equipment. Thousands of scientists from all over the world use Quartzy to manage their labs. Because of the networked environment, Quartzy encourages collaboration by helping scientists find and use the stuff they need for their experiments. Quartzy co-founder, Adam Regelmann, MD, PhD, will give an overview of the site and announce some exciting updates for 2012.