Education/EdTech-lending-library

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Project to develop a long-term loan and a lending library of instruments which includes the low-cost, high-quality, hand-held, durable, Blue-tooth enabled, and programmable multi-sensor instruments.

Project’s Goals :

• To inspire students to be involved in science,
• To supply students and teachers with inexpensive, high-quality scientific instruments to productively collect data in their classrooms
• To make data relevant to students which hopefully will lead to an increased interest in the sciences.

Strategic Goals

The Technology Permanent Loan & Lending Library supports the following ESIP Strategic Goals: Goal 1: Increase the use and value of Earth science data and information Goal 2: Strengthen the ties between observations and user communities (e.g. technologies, research, education and applications).

Work Plan:

There are planned to be two sets of teachers using the instruments (PocketLab). Multi-year loan: One classroom (students working in teams) set of instruments for an ESIP-associated teacher can develop, test, revise, and extend classroom curriculum for multiple years. Lending Library: of a classroom (team) set to an ESIP-associated educator on an annual basis for the entire school year. With the ESIP funding, we ease the issue of cost while the simplicity of application creates a variety of opportunities across a broader set of grades. By focusing on a single instrument, we can ease into the implementation of a lending-library and build environmental-focused lesson plans.

Teachers will provide an outline on how the instruments will be used in their classes. (number of classes, class names, approx number of students, age range, project topic(s)). They will also be encouraged to integrate /compare to Earth science data collected through ESIP-communities for at least one lesson.

ESIP will purchase and distribute the PocketLab instruments and ship to the teachers.

Teachers will provide a monthly update of progress

At the end of the school year, teachers will provide a short report with description of best project with data results as an example for others, and 2-3 classroom lessons shared to ESIP and (ideally) with the PocketLab website.

Communicating project results and project closure:

• Poster about progress of data collection, instrument use, lessons learned in the classroom
• Uploading of lessons to the ESIP Ed wiki, special project area and to (Ideally)PocketLab website

Timeline:

Long-term loan: 5 Pocket Voyagers + 5 PocketLab Airs

April 2019

• Purchase the Pocketlab Voyagers
• Teacher provides an outline on how the instruments will be used in their Spring 2019 classes. (number of classes, class names, approx number of students, age range, project topic(s)).
• Teachers will be encouraged to integrate /compare to Earth science data collected through ESIP-communities for at least one lesson.

May – Jun 2019

• Short report from teacher with description of best project with data results as an example for others, and 2-3 classroom lessons shared to ESIP and with the PocketLab website.

July –August 2019

• Poster about progress of data collection, instrument use, lessons learned in the classroom
• Uploading of lessons to the ESIP Ed wiki, special project area and to PocketLab website
• Purchase PocketLab Airs

Lending Library: 6 PocketLab Airs loaned each school year

July 2019

• Recruit teacher for lending library instruments
• Teacher provides an outline on how the instruments will be used in their Fall 2019 classes. (number of classes, class names, approx number of students, age range, project topic(s))
• Teachers will be encouraged to integrate /compare to Earth science data collected through ESIP-communities for at least one lesson.
• Purchase PocketLab Airs

Aug/Sept 2019 – May 2020

• Monthly update of progress
• Look into the use of GLOBE protocols for lessons (this could lead to PocketLab to be an authorized instrument for GLOBE data collection – thus further extend the data sharing)

May 2020

• Short report from teacher with description of best project with data results as an example for others, and 2-3 classroom lessons shared to ESIP and with the PocketLab website. At least 1-page summary detailing a successful project undertaken during the school year and the resulting lesson plans that we would collect and post as examples for other teachers, with acknowledgment to the author(s).

Both projects

Nov 2018 – Jan 2019:

• Create and maintain a project page on the ESIP Wiki (eg this page)

July 2019

• Poster about progress of project and outputs from teachers about of data collection, instrument use, lessons learned in the classroom

September 2019

• Special project Year 1 concluded. Based on initial phase of the project, another round (which basically involves shipping) will be conducted FY 19- 20. The loan to teacher is expected to continue another year so that he can revise and expand his lesson plans
• During or at the conclusion of your project, post any resultant artifacts code and/or a snapshot of the Amazon instance to the ESIP GitHub organization repository, and place the repository link on your project Wiki page. 

• Present your project final project status, at its completion to the ESIP Education Committee.
• Submit a brief financial report, at the conclusion of the project, on how the project funds were spent to accomplish the project goals.
• Submission to ESIP GitHub Repository of any software developed by this project (https://github.com/orgs/ESIPFed.)

Anticipated outcomes of the project:

Short report from teacher with description of best project with data results as an example for others, and 2-3 classroom lessons shared to ESIP and with the PocketLab website. At least 1-page summary detailing a successful project undertaken during the school year and the resulting lesson plans that we would collect and post as examples for other teachers, with acknolwedgement to the author(s).

Impact of project on the ESIP and/or external communities:

This project • Builds on the UW experience of lending iPads • Allows for long-term development, revision, and sharing of lesson plans that are data and instrument based. • Provides teachers examples of how to use instruments and data in the classrooms environment • Disseminates lessons to broader teacher community • Prvides demonstration of science best practice for learners to compare data they collected themselves with data from other sources.