Education and research for an enthusiastic amateur?

[A. Ekergård]

My personal thoughts about alternative to university. Both learning and research. First I have taken a handful of courses on coursera.org. It works, but to pay 49 USD for a course that’s 12 hours, doesn’t feels optimal - the welfare state might not be what it used to be, but I’m used to education being free (If we all know one big western country there education might be expensive, that’s beside the point) - plus it actually is university education. So do you have any tips, recommend any other sites, of how to get an education beside traditional universities courses?

Then, research. I never pretend to be anything but an enthusiastic amateur. However I am making some very simple experiment with biochar and I write about it on my blog (not in English). Is that’s what “citizen scientists” do? Publish in blogs, vlogs ...? My most ambition idea is to study biochar and perhaps legumes in forest agriculture. One could start with planting trees in both “normal” soil and soil with biochar mixed in it. And then just compare the grow of trees in the two grow mediums. Document it all online. One next step could be to combined it with growing legumes to see if biochar could help nitrogen transfer from legumes to trees. As far as I know, to do that one need an isotopes of nitrogen (nitrogen-15) and spectroscopy.

In theory one could get funding for research from a site like experiment.com. Since experiment.com want you to get "endorsements from colleagues and peers" and they review projects I assume they are professional and that a project approved by them have potential. That’s also the problem, can/should an enthusiastic amateur get that kind of endorsements? You think that could be done, or should we keep to social media?

Btw, this might not be the best written entry. My excuse is not just that I’m writing in my second language, it’s also that I am not 100% sure what I am trying to say.

[Dakota Hamill]

Sounds interesting.  What's your blog?

You don't need to start with trees and a forest.  Get some arabidopsis and try your biochar experiment out cheaply and quickly. Scale the system you test in and species you work with from there. 

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[A. Ekergård]

Thank you!
My blog is in Swedish and I have just started on it.
But here it is: http://blogg.vk.se/ekergard/

Arabidopsis is one ide.

[AdrianMolecule]

Try the MIT courses in EdX as an alternative to Coursera. Exceptional 

Adrian