Stroud Educators at Work

Model My Watershed:
An Innovative Approach to Teaching Environmental Science

Engaging students from a young age in math, technology, and the environmental sciences is a challenge that many teachers face, one that has a special urgency because American students have fallen behind their peers in many other countries. But with competition for a child’s attention now so fierce, how does a teacher make these subjects fun, interesting and relevant? What will it take to capture the imagination of young people and cause them to consider a career path in one of these fields? These are the fundamental questions that Stroud™ educators addressed when they began to envision Model My Watershed, an innovative web-based educational platform, recently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Building on GoogleEarth technology, Model My Watershed will enable students to learn about the watershed in which they live and the impact that land-use and other changes have on their environment and the water quality of their streams.  

The project, which received a three-year grant from NSF’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) fund, aims to excite students about science and math and to help rebuild the U.S. talent pool through programs that cultivate skills that American companies have increasingly had to fill with workers from abroad.

GETTING STUDENTS HOOKED ON SCIENCE
“The key to the success of this program will be to create a tool that doesn’t disenfranchise students,” said Dr. Nanette Marcum-Dietrich, an assistant professor at Millersville University. Marcum-Dietrich will be involved in the collaborative effort to design a curriculum, which will seek to convey to students that science is more than just facts in a book, that it is not too complex for them to understand, and that there are still exciting discoveries waiting to be made.

Her goal is to bring science education to her students in ways that make it tangible for them. “If we don’t,” she said, “we’ve really robbed them of their voice.” Model My Watershed seeks to do that by creating a tool that allows the students to use what they already know, incorporates their strengths and interests, and engages them.

Among the things they care most about, Marcum-Dietrich said, are water and the environment around them. “What these kids know best,” she said, “is their own backyard”, adding that she has seen firsthand that they will put their effort into things that matter to them and that affect their own community.

EXPLORING THE SCHUYLKILL WATERSHED FROM THE DESKTOP
While the goal of the program is to deliver an authentic learning experience to all 200,000 Philadelphia-area students, and ultimately to roll it out nationally and even globally, math and science teachers from seven area schools will pilot the tool set and related curriculum on their 7th-12th graders.

Among the first participants will be an enthusiastic science teacher at an urban school in west Philadelphia. Theresa Lewis-King, who teaches 11- to 15-year-olds at the Rudolph Blankenburg School, is thrilled at the prospect of making science come alive for her students. “I believe in hands-on, authentic learning experiences,” she said. “We’ve got to make it real for them, make it accessible, and empower them with the ability to discover how it impacts them and their community.” The trick, in her opinion, is to harness all the energy they possess by delivering a curriculum they can embrace. “If it is disconnected from their everyday life, it goes in one ear and out the other.” Make it personal, and you’ll get their attention.

In Lewis-King’s view, the new curriculum will help her students demystify science by making the conceptual real to them. The interaction with scientists through “In Time Learning” modules, including QuickTime movies, will demonstrate that entertaining and interesting people actually do science for a living. “And when the kids are hooked,” she said, “I can visualize them saying, ’Wow! Ms. Lewis-King, I could do this! I could actually do this!’” With a smile she affirms that this will indeed be fun, and this will make a difference to her students and to her community. What could be better?  

USING WEB 2.0 TOOLS TO ENGAGE STUDENTS
Model My Watershed will introduce the so-called STEM disciplines (science, technology engineering and math) with tools that are both familiar and fun to middle- and high-school students. GoogleEarth will serve as the foundation of the platform, over which scientific data, a hydrologic tool kit and geographic information systems (GIS) will be overlaid, so that students can easily locate their own watershed online. They can then use Google SketchUp to alter the environment, immediately seeing the impact of their proposed changes. The overall experience will be designed to leverage the feel of popular video games and the data sharing of social networking applications.

“Model My Watershed will allow students to experience firsthand the nature of science by exploring their neighborhoods and learning about their watersheds,” said Susan Gill, director of Education at the Stroud Water Research Center. Putting the students in charge “virtually” of the factors that affect their own watershed is a powerful motivator for engagement and a powerful impetus to have students become environmental stewards and hopefully consider a STEM career.

Links:
To learn more about the Stroud Water Research Center Education department and its programs, go to:
http://www.stroudcenter.org/education/index.htm

For more information about the National Science Foundation ITEST program, visit:
http://ct.kennesaw.edu/NSF_ITEST.html

To find out about our partners in this program, go to:
Avencia, Inc.
http://www.avencia.com/

Millersville University:
http://www.millersville.edu/index.php

The Cartographic Modeling Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania:
http://cml.upenn.edu/

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