Overview
Vital Signs 2.0 (VS) is an educational citizen science project consisting of an extensive Drupal website created by Image Works for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) and funded by the Hewlett Foundation.
The VS project provides students, teachers, scientists, and citizen scientists with the tools to monitor environmental conditions throughout Maine. The project includes a structured central data repository, tools and protocols for identifying, mapping, tracking and analyzing the occurrence and spread of invasive species into and around the state.
Solution
Image Works developed a comprehensive website built on the Drupal 6 platform composed of 13 original custom modules, 1 custom site theme, and more than 40 modules contributed by the Drupal community. The 13 custom modules extend the Drupal platform with features that are unique to the Vital Signs website. Some of these customizations include the custom data entry process for students to report their observations, peer review routines for both students and scientists to review each other's observations, and numerous administrative interfaces for both GMRI and teachers using the site.
In order to give back to the community that made this project possible, we are releasing the full source code for the website under the GPL license. The full site source code is available on the Vital Signs site.
User Benefits
Vital Signs targets and encourages participation from three primary groups of users: 7th & 8th Grade students in Maine, individuals with an interest in studying, monitoring and preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species, and research scientists studying invasive species.
Vital Signs provides its community with a number of avenues for contributing content to the site. These include:
- Species Observations
- Projects such as presentations, videos, and podcasts
- Curriculum Resources
- Peer Review and comments
- Expert Review and comments
- Community Policing
- Forums
- Commenting
Client Success
Beginning fall 2009, these resources and supporting programs have been utilized on the laptop computers provided to all Maine middle school students and were made available to all interested parties starting early 2010.
To date more than 700 members have signed up. They've contributed over 400 field observations and have submitted over 1000 comments, blog postings and other contributions to the site. If you are in Maine, please sign up and make your own contributions to the community.