The Internet is transforming how science is done, and YOU can help. In the past, the lone scientist would comb through piles of information, but now, the Internet allows 100,000s of people to look at a couple sources and report back. Together, we are moving science forward at impressive speeds. Here are two projects:
Project Noah: http://www.projectnoah.org/: Use their website or their smart phone app to help scientists identify animals and plants. This amazing site employs regular people to document and help capture knowledge about our world.
Galaxy Zoo: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/: An online community of regular people–like you–are helping to transform our knowledge of the universe by using images from the Hubble Space Telescope to help astronomers identify galaxies. With thousands of people accessing the site, scientists are able to cover many times more images than they could on their own. This is a very innovative use of our networked world.