Mobilise the Crowd

One use of Fieldtrip GB is to get groups of students collecting data over a wide area and then collate this into a master dataset.  Kind of like crowd-sourcing but with an “informed crowd” collection specific information. But, how would you best go about doing this using the current app?

At the moment the best thing to do is to create a master form and get the group to collect data against that. The process of what you would need to do is set out below:

1. Set up a “group” Dropbox account (just a regular account, but one that you are happy to share the username/password of with the group)
2. Log into the Authoring Tool with the group Dropbox account and create your data collection form and save it.  It will be saved to the group Dropbox account..
3. Get the group to log in to the group Dropbox account from their phones and sync to retrieve the form
4. Get the group to collect data against the form
5. When they have finished collecting their data, get the group to log in to the group Dropbox account from their phones and perform another sync. This will upload the data they have just collected to the group Dropbox account
6. The leader/tutor can then log in to group Dropbox account through the Authoring Tool.
7. Use the filter menu to display all the data collected against the form that the group used.
8. Export the data – this will create 1 file that contains all the data collected by the group (Note – we are working to improve the KML export and hope to add CSV as an output option)