nQuire It

Thanks to my colleague Marc Hawes for passing on details of this interesting project.
It's a Citizen science style project which involves completing missions based on particular activities in the environment....
It's apparently currently under development, and has been put together by people from the Open University.
Some details below from the ABOUT page:
Our aim is to help you explore your world by joining and creating scientific missions. We have three types of mission on nQuire-it:
  1. Win-it missions set challenges with prizes for the winners. Each challenge needs a creative response. Some missions involve science experiments, e.g., ‘Suggest an astronomy observation using the Open University’s PIRATE remotely-controlled telescope'. Others tackle everyday problems, e.g., ‘Propose an imaginative way to attract bumblebees to gardens’.
  2. Sense-it missions make use of the Sense-it mobile app to collect and share data using smartphone sensors (e.g., accelerometer, gyroscope, light, sound). For example, ‘What is the fastest lift?’. The Sense-it app can be found in Play Store here.
  3. Spot-it missions allow you to capture images and spot things around us, such as strange signs and unusual uses of English.
You can select any of these missions and start creating your own Win-it, Sense-it or Spot-it mission. Then Quire-it software is open source and anyone can join or create missions for free. You can invite other people to join your missions by using your Facebook, Twitter or Google accounts. The most successful missions will get the chance to win prizes such as money rewards, vouchers or even to have your observation made on the PIRATE telescope in Mallorca!
The nQuire-it platform has been designed as part of the project nQuire: Young Citizen Inquiry a research and development project funded by Nominet Trust and coordinated by The Open University in collaboration with the Sheffield UTC.
For more details on the nQuire-it project, please contact Professor Mike Sharples, The Open University, at mike.sharples@open.ac.uk.

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