Week 3 ~ Getting dirty, avoiding ticks & poison ivy, and employing 21st Century Skills …

During our third week, the three of us donned our waders, hit more water locations, logged lots of data, and incorporated a bunch of technology. Our experience with our water monitoring project exemplifies a STEM project and 21^st Century Skills. We are using and learning new technologies. We are collaborating with each other and with the public on a database. We are creating a PowerPoint. We are analyzing and evaluating our findings. We are communicating with each other in our daily work and will communicate our findings through blogs and a final project.

Again, our water project involves doing volunteer water monitoring for IOWATER. We attended a workshop to become certified as a volunteer and they supplied us with all the materials needs to do chemical, bacterial, and biological testing of any water site in our area.  This summer we are focusing on the watershed around Wickiup Hills. So over the last two weeks, we’ve driven and hiked to seven different locations. Some were easy to get to and access. Our last site involved driving into the back area then hiking for a half hour through timber, around lakes, through mud and tall grass, trying to avoid ticks and poison ivy, and finally climbing down a steep bank to test the Cedar River near the power plant in Palo. Our data gathering has been high tech and low tech. When Angie and I began, we recorded our data with clipboards and paper forms from IOWATER. Then I created a spreadsheet from the four forms. When John got back from his wedding, he entered the forms into a Google doc that allows us to enter the data into a smart phone or ipad. Then the data would upload into a spreadsheet. We have taken pictures at all of the sites to add to the IOWATER database along with our data. But John used a free app for his smartphone, called PhotoSynth, which allowed him to take a 360 degree panoramic shot of the area. He created an interactive Google map allowing us to view sites we’ve tested and look at the panoramic views of our testing transect. The spreadsheets allow us to collect and view our data, but also to create tables and graphs of each individual site, as well as compare and contrast a site with another.

During the summer, we will collect data from about 12 sites in the area. Then we will create an instructional PowerPoint that will show and teach our students the various steps of the Volunteer Water Monitoring and data collection.  We will be able to test each site twice this summer. This will allow us to have some starting points for comparison data. My school is northeast of Wickiup and John’s school is downstream of Wickiup. I will test Dry Creek with my students and John will test Indian Creek. Dry Creek runs into Indian Creek. So John and I will have our students collaborate and share data and experiences through Skype. Through this STEM PBL, my students will be able to incorporate most aspects of 21^st Century Learning while working on my districts’ and the Core standards of Statistics and Data Analysis.