Welcome new partners!

 

We have expanded with a growing team of excited partners  who are committed to engaging students in our project! Weekly planning meetings now also include the staff at Standing Rush (our Ohio site) and the team from University of Toledo’s GLOBE Mission Earth (GME). We have also partnered with the Watermen's Museum located in Yorktown, VA (https://watermens.org/). The museum is dedicated to outreach, education, and conservation and we are very happy to have them aboard.

Northwest Ohio received over a foot of snow yesterday! Needless to say, we are eager for Spring to arrive and we’ve mapped out our educational plans to engage students at Toledo Public Schools. 

Our Student Plan

We will kick off with students in mid-March by preparing them for the buoy interactions.  Our team will guide the learners to gain as much background knowledge as possible on both the Ohio and Virginia sites.  They will explore the sites in advance through short videos, Google Earth, and presentations on environmental issues.  Both locations will be entered as sites in the GLOBE website (GLOBE= Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment, NASA’s education outreach program).

During the buoy interaction at each site, students will record data weather conditions of water quality parameters (nitrates, ph, temperature, salinity) from the Vernier technology supported by experiment.com donors.  The buoy operator will narrate what is captured through the camera underwater, and also interpret the landscape above the water in a virtual field trip style.  As time allows, students can also ask the buoy operator questions about the site and the technology utilized.  The buoy operator will additionally share his/her professional background to inspire STEM careers.

In the classroom after the buoy interaction, students will enter data into the GLOBE website and complete a Venn diagram to compare and contrast both sites.  With the assistance of GME, students will create a research poster to interpret data and the experience, which will be presented at a virtual research symposium!