The SWOOPE experience: Precollege students mapping the environment

Conference · Tue Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 1992

OSTI ID:10175126

Eckhardt, R C; Hyer, D K

SWOOPE (Students Watching Over Our Planet Earth) is an innovative environmental science education program for teachers and students sponsored by the Department of Energy and developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The students, kindergarten through high school, gather data on an item of concern in the environment and send some of those data to a database at Los Alamos. Discussions and graphs of their results are sent back to them in newsletters. One of the key ideas of the program i s to involve the students in the process of science. They learn how to gather the data through a variety of hands-on science activities in the classroom and then take the measuring devices home to gather data in their own environment. Frequently, this involves their parents in the process as well. Although the measuring devices are usually simple and inexpensive, they are true scientific instruments, capable of gathering meaningful data. The collected data are available to scientists, agencies, and the community at large. Thus, the students participate in a truly collaborative scientific effort. Two SWOOPE Discovery Units, Water Quality and Radiation and Radon, were developed by teachers at summer institutes and have been piloted in the classroom over a two-year period. Currently, 112 teachers and almost 5000 students are using the materials. Data collected by students in the Radiation and Radon Unit include radon measurements and background measurements of ionizing radiation. The. student data on radon are being used b a study of home radon levels in New Mexico by the New Mexico Environment Department. Students in the Water Quality Unit are gathering data on city, ground and surface water that should also prove useful to environmental scientists. The water measurements include pH, temperature, turbidity, hardness, and the concentrations of nitrates, chlorine, and coliform bacteria.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 10175126
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--92-2524; CONF-9209164--6; ON: DE92040390
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990000
EDUCATIONAL TOOLS
ENVIRONMENT
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
INFORMATION
TRAINING