STEPS TOWARDS OPEN SCIENCE AND EDUCATION IN LITHUANIA Vida Mildažienė 1 , Egle Marija Ramanauskaitė 2 1 Vytautas Magnus university 2 Human Computation Institute
STEPS TOWARDS OPEN SCIENCE
AND EDUCATION IN LITHUANIA
Vida Mildažienė1, Egle Marija Ramanauskaitė2
1Vytautas Magnus university
2 Human Computation Institute
Introducing myself:Vida Mildažienė
• 1979 graduated Chemical Faculty (Chemist lecturer, biochemistry) Vilnius universitity
• 1979- 2008 Kaunas Medical University (Inst. for Biomedical Research, Inst. of Cardiology)
• 1997 – present Faculty Nature Sciences, Vytautas Magnus university
• 2008 – 2015 Director of Kaunas botanical garden, Vytautas Magnus university
• 1991 PhD in Physical sciences (biochemistry, 04P)
• 2001 Degree of habilitated doctor (Biomedicine 01B, Biochemistry).
• 2005 Professor title
Science communication:
• Organizer of Kaunas science festival „Pamatyk kitaip“ 2006-2012;
• National coordinator of „The Fascination of Plants Day“ 2012-2015;
• Supervisor of biology and biochemistry section of the National Student Academy 2006-present ;
• Organizer of „Children Science laboratory“ in Kaunas Botanical Garden, VMU (opened in 2011).
• Coordinator of VMU part in the project „Development and implementation
of tools for the national science communication system VP1-3.2-ŠMM-02-V-02-003
• Author of educative videofilms:
„Samangyviai (Bryozoa)“
„Lėtūnai (Tardigrada)“,
„Paukščių žiedavimas Ventės rage“
„Kamieninės ląstelės“ /Stem Cells/, etc.
Open science for education, for society?
Fecher, Benedikt; Friesike, Sascha
(2014). "Open Science: One Term, Five
Schools of Thought". Opening
Science. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_2:
Five Open Science schools of thought:
• The infrastructure school - concerned
with the technological architecture,
• the public school - concerned with the
accessibility of knowledge creation,
• the “measurement school” –
concerned with alternative impact
measurement,
• the “democratic school” – concerned
with access to knowledge;
• the “pragmatic school” – concerned
with collaborative research.
„We recognize two different streams within the public
school: The first is concerned with the accessibility of
the research process, the second with the
comprehensibility of the research result. Both
streams involve the relationship between scientists
and the public and define openness as a form of
devotion to a wider audience.“
Bringing science closer to society:
first steps in Science communication in LT
First tools:
(I) Science festivals;
(II) Open days in universities (science communication or marketing?)
National science festival „Erdvėlaivis Žemė“ or „Space craft Earth“ from 2004- present
- 30 000 participants in 2 weeks
Kaunas science festival „Pamatyk kitaip“ or „See it in a different way“ 2006-2012
- 5 000 participants 1 or 2 days
Image of Researchers of Lithuanian schoolchildren
• Children drawing contest „The portrait of researcher“
was organized by Kaunas science festival „Pamatyk
kitaip“ : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLnR8nNSkug
Unknown artist Augustė Dubauskaitė, 5 years
Tomas Skrodis, 7 years
The message: the real wish and creative efforts to get closer to science - deserve to be supported
I. The early stage (2000-2008):
small and episodically opened window to Science
• Science communication efforts - uncoordinated
and mostly based on the personal initiative;
• There were only few type of small grants (1
programme) from the Ministery R&E to support
these activities;
• Several NGO concentrated enthusiasts: „Mokslo
krosnis“; student organizations, like „Modusas“;
few scientists involved;
• 2 popular TV programs (Rolandas Maskoliunas,
Audrius Rakauskas);
• There was a clear lack of political will and
concern inside Lithuania about idea of opening
science to society - only strong lagging behind in
implementation of the similar European
directives;
• As obvious evidence for that the feasibility study
„The analysis of need for Science
communication“ was funded and prepared in
2007.
II. The period 2009-2013
(inspired and largerly funded from by EU):
• Rising contribution from the Ministery of research and education to development of
science communication system in the period 2009-2013:
• Increased funding via special programme for the science communication and
science education oriented projects, e.g. :
• „Development and implementation of tools for the national science communication system“;
• „Young Researcher“;
• Programme for teaching gifted children (3-4 projects);
• „Green learning environment“ - for improving teaching Natural sciences;
• Biotechnology classes for gimnasia;
• Experimental equipment for practical teaching in schools, etc.
Clearly much more efforts. How about results? Are the achievements adequate?
Was the expected system developed? Does it function well?
What happened with resources for fuelling these activities further - for 2014-2020?
III.The period 2014-2020: appearance of STEM in LT
(+Citizen science, Ho2020)
• The number of science, maths and computer science students in Lithuania is 2-fold
lower the EU average.
• Unformal STEM education map:
STEM is a curriculum based on the idea
of educating students in four specific
disciplines — science, technology,
engineering and mathematics — in an
interdisciplinary and applied approach. It
relies on structured inquiry-based and
real world problem-based learning,
connecting all four of the STEM
subjects. There is also an emphasis
placed on bridging in-school and out-of-
school STEM learning opportunities.
Primary schools
Progimnasia
The scheme of distribution of hard funds from Cohesion fund in Lithuania for the period 2014-2020
CF funds
Education part
9 priority
Elementary
(Scientific cabinet for everyday lesson)
Advanced and innovative
(Scientific cabinet for everyday lesson)
Research part
1 priority
3 waleys
(Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda)
7 other regional centers
Science museum
Open access
STEM centers
5 792 400,00 Eur
„Mokiniams pritaikytų gamtos mokslų, technologijų, inžinerijos ir matematikos tyrimų ir
eksperimentinės veiklos atviros prieigos centrų sukūrimas”
https://competitions.malcolmreading.co.uk/scienceisland/news/2016/winners-revealed
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Using_the_iNatur
alist_app_in_the_field.png
Technarium (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
New venues for open science & education
Hackerspaces Citizen Science
Citizen Science Hackerspaces
Definition: general public involved in science by data collection/analysis or do-it-yourself (DIY) science, offline & online
• Major player in open science.
• As science is democratized – made inclusive to everyone – there’s increased understanding that data & knowledge belong to everyone
• Data is released back to the public, so are results
• More journals accept papers from citizen science input, participants are co-authors
• There’s a push to make more of those open access, and not pay-walled so everyone can access their own science
• Isn’t always the case yet
Open creative spaces stuffed with most diverse technology – from metal works to 3D printing, laser cutting & biohacking
• Openness – part of the hacker ethos, intrinsic value
• Most hardware & software is open source
• The process of creation & of science is shared openly with the public via blogs & repositories
• Some members are scientists who ran from traditional academia, to pursue a more open way of doing science, e.g. biohacking
• A place for informal learning. Due to the diverse community & desire to share members learn in a lot of ways, beyond what they can learn from textbooks & lectures in schools
Catlin-Groves, C.L., 2012. The Citizen Science
Landscape: From Volunteers to Citizen Sensors and
Beyond. International Journal of Zoology, 2012,
pp.1–14. doi:10.1155/2012/349630
• Citizens can help monitoring on a
large scale.
• “The areas in which it [citizen science]
has, and most probably will continue to
have, the greatest impact and potential
are that of monitoring ecology or
biodiversity at large geographic
scales”
Powell, M.C. & Colin, M., 2009. Participatory
Paradoxes: Facilitating Citizen Engagement in
Science and Technology From the Top-
Down? Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society,
29(4), pp.325–342. doi:10.1177/0270467609336308.
• Citizen science projects are often
short-lived
• “Most participatory exercises do not
engage citizens beyond an event or
a few weeks/months, and they do
not build citizens’ participatory skills
in ways that would help them
engage with scientists or policy
makers independently.” (p. 327)
Citizen science crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, volunteer monitoring or networked science:
conducted by amateur or nonprofessional scientists, described as "public participation in scientific
research", participatory monitoring and participatory action research
Citizen Science: what’s cooking in Lithuania?
Bryozoa biodiversity at Vytautas Magnus University
Lichen biohacking at Technarium hackerspace
Looking for new biosynthetic genes in lichens with students/citizens
Rediscovering diversity of fascinating, but forgotten marine
animals
What’s cooking in Lithuania? Hackerspaces/makerspaces
Technarium in Vilnius Kaunas Makerspace
Padirbtuvės in Vilnius M-LAB
...AND OTHERS
Study: Technarium hackerspace: community-enabled informal learning in science and technology
E. M. Ramanauskaite, biohacker at Technarium & education scientist
Alternative education:Learning occurs at unexpected places
More info: http://bit.ly/learnTxNx, [email protected]
Citizen science:
example of project on Bryozoan biodiversity monitoring in LT (+LV, PL)
Biology intro
• Fresh water moss animals (Bryozoa);
Colony of Plumatella repens (photo: Gintautas Steiblys)
Several classes of water organisms are prescribed to
Bryozoa or Ectoprocta type; ~5000 Bryozoa species are
known, the most numerous are seawater Bryozoans
Gymnolaemata. Phylactolaemata are freshwater moss
animals.
Four species of freshwater Bryozoa are currently registred in
Lithuania.
Open science intro • in summer 2014 m. we found a „new bryozoan
species“on the leaves of waterlillies
We have asked IBA president Patrick Wyse
Jackson about consultation. He kindly directed
our request to the world‘s best expert on
freshwater bryozoans, the author of
texbooks prof. Timothy Wood from Wright
State University, Dayton, OH, USA.
The correspondence started...
Typical length of one ndividual (zooid - it is not fully independent animal) - 0.5 mm
• Tim Wood explained, that
Bryozoa are identified using
scanning electron microscopy
of their eggs (statoblasts) – the surface
has ornament that is
specific to every species.
Tim Wood asked to send him the
sample of statobasts from Lithuania;
• Tim Wood send us his book!
• Unexpectedly, in winter the
colony of the suspected „new
species“ developed in our aquarium.
We send their pictures to prof. T. Wood
and collected statoblasts.
• T. Wood wrote the paper for the IBA
bulletins „Letters from Lithuania“ –
published in 2015 (11)
http://bryozoa.net/iba/files/IBA_Bull_11(1).pdf
Historical part
• In 2015 we were lucky to find in archives master thesis on Bryozoan
research defended in 1933
The study entitled „Contribution to the research of freshwater Bryozoa in Lithuania“ was performed by student of our university Bronė Pajiedaitė in 1931-1932 under supervision of prof. Tadas Ivanauskas
Thesis: 80 pages volume with about 30 hand-made drawings
• At least 7 species of Bryozoa were described – only 4 are registered
nowadays;
• Our „new species“ was desribed there as Plumatella repens var.
Apressa Krpln.!
• In Satarečiaus pond (Utenos reg.) all 7 species were found.
Our discovery was assessed by prof. Tim Wood
and presented for the members of International Bryozoology Asociation (after more than 80 years the results of forgotten study were OPENED!!!):
Detective search in Google:
personality of Bronė Pajiedaitė
• During the war, she rescued Jewish children - at the risk of own life,
together with Veronica Žvironaite they saved Tamara, daughter of
prof. Lazerson, from the Kaunas ghetto.
• In 2000 B. Pajiedaite was given World Righteous name and medal.
• After the war, along with other intellectuals in Kaunas Brone
Pajiedaite signed the declaration of independence of Lithuania
• Therefore she was arrested by KGB and committed suicide in
prison in 1946.
Project outline:
Title „YEC Exploring nature“ /“On Brone Pajiedaite path“
Activities (responsible partners): 1. Training of teachers (seminars,
workshops, consultations) 1+2+4; 2. Field expeditions of YEC in regional
parks for collecting samples (with GPS data base) 1;
3. Investigation and identification of the collected samples, formation of zoocollection (2+4);
4. Construction of the distribution map of bryozoan species using Epicollect programme for e-resourcing (2+3+4).
5. Project conference (1); 6. Project video materials: New version
of film on Bryozoa and movie about the Project (2);
7. Publication of project e-book (1-4)
Partners (LT, PL, LV, ...): (1) Institutions for non-formal education (Museums, science centers, nonformal education centers; (2) Vytautas Magnus university (3) Regional Parks; (4) T. Ivanauskas Zoology muzeum (Kaunas)
Target group: Young explorers clubs (schoolchildren and teachers)
Project consultant: prof. T. Wood (USA)
Statoblast pictures made by scanning electron microscopy in Lithuanian Institute of Energetics
Doc. Ingrida Šatkauskienė, dr. Simona Tučkutė. Prof. Vida Mildažiene
Cristatella muceda Plumatella fungosa
Plumatella repens
Project attractiveness
• Bryozoans are beautiful microscopic animals that can be easily found by volunteers and identified initially by the light microscopy. The site of habit can be fixed by the mobile phone programme Epicollect.
• Project idea combines real fun of nature discovery with serious research on biodiversity: quite a big chance to register hitherto unregisterd species, constructing their distribution map, forming collection for the museum (T. Ivanauskas zoomuseum and Nature Museum of Latvia supported the idea), identifying species by statoblast SEM made available for YEC.
• Prof. T. Wood has expressed wish to be the project research consultant. He is coming to project training in May, 2017 (the first training was performed in 2016).
• The intention is to make international CS project LT-LV-PL.
• Project has strong historical and civic component. The story about personality of Brone Pajiedaite can be intertwined to the educative content. On the other hand, the project will allow to honor her memory.
Igliaukos A.Matučio gimnazijos mokinių sukurtas filmukas:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8mZoE3-
nEnwTWkydVNad2N3ejg/view?usp=drive_web
• http://gmf.vdu.lt/mokytojams/klubas-mokslo-vektorius/
Registruokites!!!
AČIŪ UŽ DĖMESĮ!