Eco-monitoring follow-on project 2012-13

Professor Dan Davies, Chris Collier and Alan Howe, Centre for Early Scientific Learning (CRESL)

What is eco-monitoring?Eco-monitoring is using electronic data to monitor aspects of the local environment such as noise or carbon monoxide pollution. Some dataloggers can be used with a GPS device and a camera to record where a reading was taken and what the surroundings looked like. These data can then be combined to produce maps of data on Google Earth.

Aims of the follow-on project•To embed the learning from the eco-monitoring projects (2008-10) throughout six of the original project schools, by involving children from KS2 acting as peer tutors in KS1 classrooms and outdoors, to develop a progressive curriculum of data-logging experiences throughout each school.•To further disseminate the findings from the eco-monitoring project by each of the six original project schools linking with at least one other local school. This will widen the impact to at least six additional primary schools.•To contact the science departments of the secondary schools in which pupils originally involved in the eco-monitoring project are now based (at least one secondary in each of the two regions), with a view to involving them in peer-tutoring within their previous (and possibly also new) primary schools, and to develop some joint primary-secondary datalogging projects, with a view to future cross-phase bridging units in science.

Progress to dateThe project team visited 10 of the original schools involved in the Bath/South Gloucestershire project (2008-9) and the Hillingdon cluster project (2010) to find out:•Whether the datalogging equipment supplied to the schools as part of the eco-monitoring project is still being used; and if so how and when•Any further dissemination of the project and/or associated practice within and beyond the school•If the equipment is not being used, what barriers have prevented the ongoing sustainability of the project•Ideas teachers may have for removing some of the barriers to ongoing use of datalogging within the school•Whether the school would be interested in being involved in a future project, either in a mentoring or other role.Datalogging is still taking place regularly in seven of them (though not using GPS or specifically linked to environmental themes) and there is an appetite for spreading it more widely. One South Gloucestershire school had subsequently used the monitoring of light levels in the playground to win a grant for a shady pergola; a proposal described by the charitable awarding body as the strongest they had received in 15 years. Three of the schools have used peer-mentoring to initiate datalogging in Key Stage 1.

Next steps•Original project pupils visit their former primary schools and work with new mentor pupils to develop data-logging activities in KS2.•Reciprocal visits between original project schools and their new local primaries.•Reciprocal visits between original project schools and secondary science departments where the original project pupils are now studying.•New mentor pupils start working in KS1 to develop data-logging activities.•Develop KS1-2 and KS2-3 progression schemes of work in datalogging•The eco-monitoring CPD unit will shortly appear on www.azteachscience.co.uk.