Tag: probe

Ambient Weather Station

Amazon Prime Day got me again. I found this weather station (Ambient Weather WS-2902C WiFi Smart Weather Station) for $10 off (I think). What attracted me about this device was not so much the capacity to collect multiple weather variables that would appear on a local display, but the wifi connection available with this model. Owners of certain weather stations are part of a network of devices that allows the integration of data – kind of a citizen science concept (Ambientweather.net). I sometimes write about data literacy and the types of projects K12 educators might implement to collect and analyze data and this device at a reasonable price would work great for such projects.

I have encountered one challenge. I successfully assembled the weather station (not that difficult) and established a connection between the station and the local monitor. However, I did not read the product description carefully and missed the part about the 2.4GHz wifi router. My router operates at 5GHz and should be modifiable to also activate a 2.4 radio, but the online instructions for the model we have said this should be possible. However, the online product description doesn’t match what appears when I connect to the router. We have a web extender that offers both 2.4 and 5 channels, but mesh networks are not accepted by the Ambient product. I will have to discuss this inconsistency with technical support. The router is part of the modem we rent from our DSL provider so some additional research will be required.

I did get the feed working. Here is access to the data from my device as it is being collected.

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Student Vodcasts – Eco-Ed

The role technology can play in field-based learning (e.g., biology) has long been a topic I like to present because it runs contrary to many people’s way of thinking about technology. Digital cameras, probes, and digital microscope are easy to bring into the field and allow the collection of data (broadly defined) that can be processed at a later time.

For several years, middle school students from Grand Forks and surrounding communities have been participating in an EcoEd camp at a regional state park. Technology staff members from the Grand Forks schools have been in the field supporting this experience since the projects began.

One personal observation – it has been less difficult for technology folks to find ways to assist students in what they do in the field than it has been for some classroom teachers to built on the field experiences once students are back in the classroom. I would describe this as an issue of “processing”. Hands on experiences, like information received in any form, typically must be processed to increase understanding and retention. Some of the potential benefit of “field trip” experiences goes unrealized without followup. Of course, this is not always the case and here is an interesting example of “post trip” processing from the students at South Middle School. Students were grouped as teams to describe their experiences through podcasting (vodcasting if you make a distinction between pure audio and audio+images). These projects are available from the South Middle School web site and you might want to take a look.

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NECC 2002

Cindy and I are presenting at NECC. Our presentation concerns some of our experiences in using technology in the field. The NECC description for our presentation is online.We will be talking about gathering data with probes, the use of digital cameras and video, digital microscopes and related projects.

Probe

A little more about blogs:What you see here is a little misleading. Blogs are sometimes promoted as an alternative to having to know something about HTML or a sophisticated web authoring program. This is only partially true. It turns out that it can be helpful to know html. I can create some of the effects you see here (bold text, links) by entering html commands when I enter the text.

It also a little misleading to claim blogs are free. If I wanted to stick with pure text, this would be the case. However, I wanted to be able to include images from NECC, so I spent $35 (for the year) to be able to upload and link images. I have experience with only one blogging site so I cannot really say what options are available in other programs.

Here are some blog resources:Blogger.comMoveable TypeThere are several other options so if this interests you consider conducting a web search.

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