Week 1:

This week I started my externship at Wickiup Hills Learning Center & Area in Toddville. This is my second year as an extern. Last year I spent indoors with an engineering department. I really enjoyed that experience. I’m excited about this summer because I will still be doing data analysis, but it will be in a different setting. I will be outdoors a lot of the time. So that will mean sun - yay!, but bugs – ick! I am excited to be gaining more ideas for STEM projects to use in my classroom. In addition, Wickiup is near the school where I teach, so our summer projects will be easy to adapt to my classroom.

Some of these projects will be to create and update some of their curriculum to use with school fieldtrips, creating and updating informational materials to be used by their volunteers, and creating visuals for their flower, plant, and benthic macroinvertebrates (bugs found in water) identifiers.

But one of our main projects will be to monitor various water sites of the Middle Cedar Watershed. Monitoring water sites will involve chemical and bacterial testing and photographing and recording physical characteristics. The chemical testing includes pH, phosphate, chloride, oxygen, and nitrates & nitrites. The main bacteria we will test for is the bad e-coli. The training we received from IOWATER through the DNR allows us to record the data in the DNR’s statewide database. Throughout the next few weeks we will be monitoring some of the creeks, marshland, streams, Palo reservoir, and the Cedar River. We would like to use our data to add to the DNR's database and to create teaching videos and curriculums for our classrooms and for Wickiup. Ideally the water site monitoring would be done twice a year, fall and spring, up to monthly. So I could pick up some of the site monitoring with my students.

I really did not have any concerns with the beginning of my externship because this was my second year and because I had already visited Wickiup on a field trip with students. So I was already familiar with them and their services. The Naturalists that work here and Angie and John are so easy to work with, the transition into this externship has been easy and a good one.