STEM

Welcome to the Space To Learn STEM Conversations page 

💡The central concept of this project is to share the natural environment with educators through a continuous high speed data connection. Twelve acres of woodland surrounding The Schoolhouse, Mourne Park play host to a growing assortment of outdoor learning initiatives, most of which leverage technology to deliver what are compelling experiences.

💡Engagement levels are high in learners due to the immediacy of what they are doing, either onsite or online.

💡Being able to delve into the actual live experiment, whilst watching it through multiple video feeds, creates agency in the participant. 

💡A research project exploring this phenomenon, especially focused on the mental health benefits, is being undertaken in association with Oxford Brookes University.

💡Data is broadcast for all of us to reference in our teaching.

 

An investigation into outdoor learning

 
 

What is this learning space?

Who can this space benefit?

💡The desired outcome is for Primary and Secondary pupils to be shown real-world applications of physical technology.

💡Particular opportunities exist for neurodivergent children and their carers

💡 Live data feeds directly into classrooms to provide STEM subjects with concrete examples of how technology can make a meaningful difference in an environmentally sensitive setting.

💡Teachers learn from seeing how these techniques and technologies can form a basis for learning and be duplicated elsewhere

The Transmission Zone

Some potential outcomes:

1. Environmental awareness, protection and engagement

2. Action Research Project: teachers can incorporate this long-term field study into their research

3. Coding and data analysis skills

4. Design challenge for new sensor-based biodiversity studies

5. Therapeutics: especially for neurodivergent children and providing mental health benefits

6. CPD: Teacher training

7. Cross curricular, including History / Literacy: told by the trees through radio frequency (RFID) tags

A 12 acre site in a designated AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) adjoining Mourne Park, a significant Woodland Trust estate

Mourne Park, Kilkeel

90 mins North of Dublin

60 mins South of Belfast

The Mountains of Mourne

Sensors Online:

💡Enviro+ HAT with particulate sensor sending data & camera imagery from tree-based Raspberry Pi to this site via MongoDB

💡The same sensors mounted on a mobile platform (robot) to be brought into schools for local site analysis

💡Wildlife cameras throughout the woods utilising the DrayTek outdoor WiFi: targeting, for example, red squirrels, pine martin, kingfishers

💡Cameras optimisations, such as AI scene detect experimentation

💡Indoor humidity and temperature sensors for archive monitoring: historical resource on site

Sensors Ahead:

💡Starfield: to enable light pollution as a learning point, also the recording of transitioning shooting stars (will be via Raspberry Pi & wide field CMOS)

💡Data drawn from the movement of the trees, transmitted then converted into remote animated visualisations.

💡PH for the river or for the stream

💡Moisture (soil) – Micro:Bit powered ideally

💡Wind speed: data from this sensor potentially also generating animated graphical output

💡Water flow rate (measuring electrical current generated)

💡River depth: it is a spate river due to the mountains – pressure sensor above a submerged tube perhaps

💡Radio frequency analysis: visual waterfall representation of the local radio wave activity

💡Directional rotating microphone: visual representation of the sound scape

💡Robot Explorer: navigated remotely using a grid system

Timetable:

💡Spring 2024: Transmission Zone established with access route, PoE and initial camera.

             CloseUp Cam1 and CloseUp Cam2 installed

💡Summer 2024; RiverCam1 and River CloseUp Cam1 (GSM) installed.

💡Autumn 2024: On site visits from ASK and local primary pupils

         Squirrel feeder fitted, SquirrelCam1 installed 

          (MP=Red squirrel sanctuary: protected and monitored)

💡Spring 2025: Watchbox including heat camera deployed in Transmission Zone

The Two CloseUp Cams                       est Spring 2024

Spring 2025:  On site visits from secondary pupils

Late Spring 2025: Robot Explorer, umbilical powered outdoor robot deployed

Delivery:

💡I will maintain momentum on this project so that pupils may continue benefitting as the learning potential is explored.

💡The data streams are already shared with schools as they go live. 

💡The associated resources that I create, provide tangible learning materials for teachers to retain and deploy when it suits them to do so. 

💡I have been invited to inspire learners in the South West of England by introducing them to physical computing, especially through the Micro:Bit and Raspberry Pi. To assist with this I provide real world applications for physical computing.

💡When visiting schools as a STEM Advisor, I feature the Space To Learn project as a place where one environment can inform another. For example the robot in the classroom transmits live particulate data to the website, alongside the data being received from the tree in the woodland.

💡As a Director of Digital Writes, I  find ways in which creative writing can be nurtured and reading for pleasure encouraged, for example with the trees able to offer up vocabulary electronically. We also work closely with the ASC in Swindon to develop technological therapies, such as building Micro:Bit instruments, robitics and remote sensory calming.

💡Finally there is a parallel project called the Flickernet Archive that is based within the nineteenth century Schoolhouse. It seeks to digitise and share a body of archive material which relates to the local landscape. How the historical narrative is preserved and disseminated remains to be seen, but technology offers some great options!

Click here to return to the main S2L page
Click here for a STEM blog article

My sincere thanks to everyone who is helping Space To Learn to take shape, especially:

Pete Marshman and the Digit<All> Community

Keith Phillips (Digital Writes)

The Swindon Maker Space

Oxford Brookes University

The Institute of Technology, Swindon

St Louis Grammar School, Kilkeel

Autism Support Kilkeel

Odyssey Computing Hub, Gloucester