Hotaling, L., & Lowes, S., & Lin, P., & Stolkin, R., & Bonner, J. S., & Kirkey, W. D., & Ojo, T. (2012, June), Student-created Water Quality Sensors  Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--21951

\bibitem{asee_peer_21951}
  Hotaling, L., \& Lowes, S., \& Lin, P., \& Stolkin, R., \& Bonner, J. S., \& Kirkey, W. D., \& Ojo, T. (2012, June), \emph{Student-created Water Quality Sensors}
  Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, San Antonio, Texas.
  10.18260/1-2--21951

Liesl Hotaling, Susan Lowes, Peiyi Lin, Rustam Stolkin, James S. Bonner, William David Kirkey, and Temitope Ojo.  "Student-created Water Quality Sensors".  2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas, 2012, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2012.  https://peer.asee.org/21951 Internet.  25 Apr, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_21951}
  Liesl Hotaling, Susan Lowes, Peiyi Lin, Rustam Stolkin, James S. Bonner, William David Kirkey, and Temitope Ojo.
  "Student-created Water Quality Sensors".
  \emph{2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, San Antonio, Texas, 2012, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2012.
  https://peer.asee.org/21951 Internet.  25 Apr, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_21951
author = "Liesl Hotaling, Susan Lowes, Peiyi Lin, Rustam Stolkin, James S. Bonner, William David Kirkey, and Temitope Ojo"
title = "Student-created Water Quality Sensors"
booktitle = "2012 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2012"
month = "June"
address = "San Antonio, Texas"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/21951}
number = {10.18260/1-2--21951}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -                           Student-created water quality sensorsSensor development is a topical and highly interdisciplinary field, providing motivatingscenarios for teaching a multitude of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)subjects and skill sets.This paper describes the development and implementation of a carefully scaffolded set of highschool curriculum modules, tied to the state and national standards in science, math, andtechnology, that integrate fundamental STEM principles while at the same time introducingstudents to the field of sensors and sensor networks—technologies that are increasinglyimportant in all fields, but particularly in the world of environmental research.In this project, high school students first build, calibrate and test a set of sensors and circuits, tomeasure a variety of physical quantities. To build and understand their sensors, they must makeuse of a wide range of core knowledge of mathematics and physical science, as well as learningpractical hands-on technology skills such as soldering and debugging circuits. In later modules,students interface their sensors with computers, and write programs to gather raw signals fromthe sensors, implement calibration curves, and perform data manipulation and data logging. Inlater modules, students program their own communications protocols for wireless datatransmission, and connect their computerized sensor stations together to form a distributedwireless sensor network. Additional modules explore the use and implications of this technologyfor environmental research.The project has been highly successful in a wide range of classrooms, including pre-engineering,biology, earth science, physics, chemistry, mathematics and environmental science, for studentsat all academic levels, and in both rural and inner-city schools.This paper will provide an overview of the educational modules, a description of the sensorsbuilt by students, and examples of how these activities are tied to core curricula, enabling themodules to be utilized in regular classes without disrupting the semester’s teaching goals, andwill briefly discuss the benefits of the professional development model through which they wereintroduced to the teachers. We will then present the research results of the first two years ofclassroom implementation, during which 36 teachers were equipped, trained on curriculum, andimplemented the modules with approximately 3,000 middle and high school students. Resultsshow that as students engaged in hands-on problem solving, they learned engineering, math, andphysics concepts. Not only did building and testing sensors engage the students and increasetheir interest in STEM subjects and careers, but increased their understanding of fundamentalconcepts of electricity and increased their basic math (algebra) skills. Furthermore, theirawareness of water quality as an environmental issue grew as well.
AU  - Liesl Hotaling
AU  - Susan Lowes
AU  - Peiyi Lin
AU  - Rustam Stolkin
AU  - James S. Bonner
AU  - William David Kirkey
AU  - Temitope Ojo
CY  - San Antonio, Texas
DA  - 2012/06/10
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Student-created Water Quality Sensors
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/21951
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--21951
ER  -