Last Week, Water. This Week, AIR. (The Series Continues)
Last week in this space I recommended studying one of life’s essentials, the water we drink. I also endorsed project-based learning because it demands that students become producers of knowledge, not mere regurgitators of canned information.
A number of readers asked for more, and so here’s a second recommendation: let’s study the air that we breath every minute of every hour of every day. This particular project is also a good example of how technology can support genuine learning.
For this project, an elementary school needs a portable air quality indicator, one of which costs about $250. Suppose that three or four times each school day students carry their monitor outside, turn it on, and record the measurements–which would be automatically entered into an accessible data base. Back in class, they could compare the daily and hourly readings for their playground and look for changes. They would need to know how to interpret readings, which would require some basic science research and direct instruction from their teacher. Perhaps they would ask local scientists to come in and talk and also Skype with experts from all over the globe.
They’d be studying the science of air quality and learning about the specifics of air pollution, the causes and consequences of asthma, et cetera, et cetera. Perhaps they’ll become curious about the incidence of asthma and other lung-related conditions in their town or state and begin trying to plot and graph air quality CONTINUE READING: Last Week, Water. This Week, AIR. (The Series Continues) | The Merrow Report