Education ForeCAST Tipsheet

Watersheds and River Systems: At a time when scientific understanding is critical to success in a global economy, many teachers are turning to a combination of grass-roots and high-technology to create a scientifically literate society. The testing of water quality offers practical lessons in chemistry, biology, earth science and math. Typically, multimedia water quality lesson plans include teaching students to research and analyze data. Tests may be run for dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature change, B.O.D., phosphates, nitrates, turbidity, fecal coliform, and stream speed. In curricula that combine practical field work with multimedia analysis and reporting, teachers are able to meet these basic educational reform goals in the study of water quality: authentic tasks multidisciplinary tasks student exploration collaborative tasks interactive modes of instruction The American Association for the Advancement of Science's "Benchmarks for Science Literacy" (an analysis and guide to teaching K-12 math and science, concluded that it is not only the understanding of each of the separate disciplines of science or math that is important in science education but the understanding of the connection between different areas of science. The Classroom Experience Tenth grade biology students from Eden Prairie High School, wearing waist-high rubber waders, lean into the flow while walking into the Mississippi River at Fort Snelling State Park in Minneapolis. Biology teacher Jean Tuschie watches while students retrieve water samples for testing, and take measurements with a device called a Calculator-Based Laboratory. "They're taking the levels of dissolved oxygen in the water. They have to measure it both in percent saturation and as miligrams per liter, "she explains. Up on the riverbank, other students are huddled around test tubes and chemicals, testing for phosphates and nitrates. During the ten weeks a year they spend studying rivers, Tuschie's classes also travel to northern Minnesota to visit the source of the Mississippi at Lake Itasca. Tuschie says students use computers to analyze their data to come up with an overall water quality percentage. "Ninety percent means its excellent water quality, 70 percent means it's just fair." For three years, the Eden Prairie students have shared their data over the Internet with a high school down river in Barton, Arkansas. Students in both schools learn how much water quality declines down river. They also found the Arkansas samples higher in nitrates and phosphates, from agricultural runoff. The technology used in this project is an answer to a basic problem: Lectures and textbooks have a limited appeal to most students. Researchers and evaluators say hands-on experiments and team problem-solving are critical to keeping students interested, especially in science.

For more information on the Eden Prairie High School water quality project, visit the school online ("http://www.edenpr.k12.mn.us/) Explore other ideas for integrating technology into science curricula, and find out about other water quality research projects, on these websites: Water Quality Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne (www.wq.uiuc.edu/) Water Environment Web in Alexandria, Virginia (www.wef.org) Washington State Department of Transportation Water Quality Research Project (http://gilligan.esu7.k12.ne.us/) Marquette University Water Quality Center at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (www.eng.mu/) Electric Power Research Institute (mostly corporate research) in Palo Alto, California (www.epri.com/) Listen to the Education ForeCAST pieces on water quality from: Minnesota Public Radio KUOW-FM in Seattle Download a free copy of Real Audio here