Open University October 08 Trials
Student recording data
Bronya Norton, 10th February 2009
This trial was based around students’ GCSE coursework on urban heat islands. The technical development focussed on supporting the fieldwork aspect of the students’ projects.Researchers worked with the whole of year 10 Key Stage 3 classes (aged 14-15 years) that were studying geography GCSE at Oakgrove School in Milton Keynes, and their 2 geography teachers. The 76 pupils were divided into 3 classes. Shared design of the project and the PI Toolkit was developed through a series of meetings with the teachers in the term leading up to the students’ coursework. Meetings were held with Sciencescope to confirm best use of sensors and validate the fieldwork methodology.
During the fieldtrip, the students used Sciencescope data loggers and sensors to collect wind speed, temperature, infrared irradiance and carbon monoxide data, and took GPS readings of the data collection locations. These were entered into the Personal Inquiry Toolkit running on Asus ultra mobile laptops provided to each group of 4 students, and students were encouraged to add text comments for each location. Cameras were provided to each group to take evidence supporting photographs of locations.
Data from the laptops was uploaded by the technical research team to a central web server that could be accessed by the students from any location (home, school IT suites, etc) through a group login and password. Photographs were saved onto USB drives. An export function in the Toolkit allowed students to output data in .xls (Excel) or .kml (Google Earth) formats for representation and visualisation during the write-up period of their project.
