Dr Antonio Portas Northumbria University Connecting with the crowd Conference, London, 16 June 2017 The National Eclipse Weather Experiment (NEWEx): use an evaluation of a citizen science tool for schools’ outreach Co-authors: Antonio Portas, Department of Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering, Northumbria University, Luke Barnard, Chris Scott and R. Giles Harrison, Department of Meteorology, University of Reading. The National Eclipse Weather Experiment (NEWEx) was a citizen science project for atmospheric data collection from the partial solar eclipse of 20 March 2015. In this short talk, I will talk about lessons learned in trying to engage school audiences to take part in this citizen sience project: from the design of user friendly webforms for weather data collection, to the use of several external partners for the dissemination of the project nationwide. We estimate that up to 3500 pupils and teachers took part in this experiment, through the 127 schools postcodes identified in the data submission. Overall, we demonstrate that NEWEx provided a fair representation of the change in the UK meteorological conditions throughout the eclipse, despite the simplicity of the approach robust reductions in both temperature and wind speed during the eclipse were observed. On the day of the eclipse, the headline results were processed in near real time, immediately published online, and featured in UK national press articles.

1. The National Eclipse Weather
Experiment (NEWEx): use and
evaluation of a citizen science tool
for schools’ outreach

2. Keep you mouth shut …

3. During the partial solar eclipse of March 2015, we
asked CS to collect atmospheric data to investigate
the effects of a substantial solar eclipse on the
following weather variables:
• Temperature
• Wind speed
• Wind direction
• Cloudiness

4. Highlights
• 503 data entries
• 127 schools’ postcodes
• 2600-3500 individual
participants
• CS data provided a fair
representation of
meteorological changes
when compared with
URAO & Met Office

5. Highlights

6. Lessons learnt …

7. A catchy name will take
you far…

8. Think about end-user abilities
and make use of existing
platforms

11. Network, network, network
…

13. Feedback

14. ‘Opening up the investigation to the public
allowed children in our school to work on a real
life situation, using equipment they were
unfamiliar with, working as a team and
interpreting data.’
Teacher
The good …

15. ‘really poor - could not see the time slots or
criteria at the top of the page when I scrolled
across to enter data?. . .’
Teacher
The bad …

16. Thanks for
listening