Virtual expeditions, citizen science, learning and teaching

First of all, the pandemic is leading to a huge drop in air pollution, showing what’s possible if we scale down.

Secondly, with the situation being what it is and with many of us marooned at home, here are some options for virtual expeditions, citizien science, conservation and learning or helping from the comfort of your home:

Online citizen science and home projects

You can  help our local scientists with projects such as analysing coral reef quadrant, camera trap or whale fluke photos from home or other citizen science-based jobs. If this is something that interest you, please get in touch and we will connect you with our scientists.

You may also want to look at the list of home projects we offer on our website, although many of them help with our operations, rather than being citizen scientist-based.

Finally, Wikipedia has a great list of all sorts of citizen science projects you can take part in from home.

Reading

For lighter reading to get you started, you can browse through our annual Magazine or the expedition diaries on this blog. Or have a look through our media coverage archives, delight in our achievements, find out about our history and people, our mission and policies, or read through some personal stories and testimonials.

You can also study our campaigns on how to be (radically) greener, how to do more for the planet, yourself and Biosphere Expeditions, and how to beat the charlatans in volunteering.

Delve deeper into things via our expedition reports or our publications in the scientific literature.

Our social media channels are full of news, views and updates.

Viewing

Our YouTube channel has hours worth watching on it, including lots of videos for each expedition and other themes such as trailers & expedition summaries; vlogs and diaries; TV coverage; testimonials, reviews & feedback; our scientists and more.

We also have thousands of pictures from our expeditions in our Facebook picture archive and in our Google photo albums (current expeditions: Armenia, Arabia, Azores, Costa Rica, Germany, Kenya, Maldives, Malawi, South Africa, Sweden,  Thailand, Tien Shan; formers expeditions: Altai, Amazonia, Australia (marsupials), Australia (turtles), Brazil, Caprivi, Honduras, Musandam, Malaysia, Namibia, Oman, Poland, Romania, Scotland, Slovakia (summer), Slovakia (winter), Sri Lanka, Spain, Sumatra, Ukraine.

Elsewhere on the internet, there are excellent virtual museum tours such as the one of the London Natural History Museum and others. There are also channels on wildlife conservation, science & conservation, citizen science, science and of course thousands of TED talks on all sorts of subjects.

Learning

There is a myriad of distance learning opportunities nowadays ranging from full degree to short courses.  There is a wide range of online learning sites and portals to find the course you want. Many of them are free and there is lots of choice amongst topics such as citizen sience, biodiversity, ecology and conservation. Portals include FutureLearn, StudyPortals, Class Central and MOOC list. There’s even an online happiness class.

Teaching

If you are an educator and need support for virtual teaching, we can help. Topics include any number of talks, presentations and online teaching materials centered around expeditions, citizen science, biodiversity conservation, community-based conservation intiatives. We can cater for all ages and provide phone-ins, chats, pictures, presentations, talks, Q&A sessions and more. If this is of interest, please get in touch to discuss your requirements.