As part of Greening STEM: Taking Technology Outdoors, National Environment Education Week (EE Week, April 14-20) will highlight the growing opportunity to engage today's students in learning about the environment around them, with new technologies that enable scientific research and develop 21st century skills. Score!
Here are some ways to take technology outdoors:
- Mobile Devices: With access to a camera, the Internet and a GPS, smartphones and tablets make it easy to gather, organize and submit data from observations. Apps can be downloaded for little to no cost that make engaging students in a particular aspect of study even easier. Check out the top 10 apps for taking tech outdoors.
- GPS Units: On their own, GPS units are great tools for getting students outside and engaged in environmental field research and service-learning projects. Take a look at what other educators are doing with GPS.
- Digital Cameras: Students can use digital cameras to document their local environment, track their progress on science projects, collect evidence and present their findings to their peers in class. Not to mention, since so many digital cameras come equipped with a video recording mode these days, students can even shoot videos of what they see.
- Digital Weather Stations: Say hello to the meteorologist inside you. With a digital weather station, students can add weather conditions to their study of a certain environment. Imagine having a few minutes at the beginning of each day to take a look at the weather station in your classroom or home and discussing what the weather conditions could mean or patterns that arise.
- Water Quality Monitoring Tools: Monitoring water quality is a real-world and hands on application of STEM that also enables students to become stewards of the water resources in their area. Fancy, tech tools like electronic probes and infrared thermometers add accuracy and a level of excitement to the process.
To learn even more, visit National Environmental Eduation Week's website or STEMblog.
