Students use devices to learn weather, quakes

Talk about live science, Sidney Middle School students have had quite the interactive lessons with recent technology that’s been implemented into the classroom.

Within the last couple months, science teacher Mark Halvorson and his students have put the classroom seismograph to good use, observing two earthquakes that made headlines: the 6.5 earthquake off the coast of northern California on Jan. 10 and the 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti on Jan. 12. “It was pretty good, timing wise,” Halvorson said, whose class happened to be studying the volcano and earthquake unit.

The seismograph has been part of the classroom learning for four years and sits at the back of the classroom – not really the ideal place for such a device but is good for demonstrations. “We kind of are working in reverse because we get the information that tells us the magnitude and the epicenter locations on the Internet or wherever,” Halvorson said. Then the students go back through the corresponding data and review the results.

Some quake results don't always turn out. Due to interference, the one in Chile wasn’t caught, and the quakes from Yellowstone National Park are too quiet to detect.

That’s just some of the interactive learning that goes on in the science class. Some students have been making use of the weather software, Weather Link, which keeps track of data that includes temperature, wind speed and direction, wind chill, barometric pressure, humidity and precipitation, among other weather variables. The software is linked wirelessly to a weather station located on top of the school building. Data is logged daily, monthly and yearly and automatically uploads every 10 minutes to the Internet.

Weather collected for Sidney can be found at www.sidneyps.com on the front page to the right. “If you click on that, it’ll take you to the weather underground site for our weather station which gives a partial summary of the data,” Halvorson said. Information can also be found at www.richland.org/cd and clicking on Sidney. Here graphs and charts reflecting recent conditions are on display. Thanks to Wade Whiteman, MSU-Richland County Extension agent, and Ken Stennes, Middle School technology specialist, the Web sites wouldn’t have been possible.

It’s really a valuable education tool, Halvorson said. While the weather station has been around for two years, the software wasn’t purchased until last year and uploaded in August. It’s the first year, the tool has been put to work. So far, students have been using it for science projects, but eventually, it’ll be used in a unit on the atmosphere and weather. “We will be doing some blogging and analyzing weather data in later March into April,” he said.

Even though most students have yet to begin working with the technology, those who have seem to enjoy it. “There are a number of students that do have an interest in science and tend to find things like this very beneficial, useful and interesting,” Halvorson said. “Some kids really grab on to it, get it and think it’s great.”

Halvorson noted exposing students to technology in various forms is beneficial and hopes his students at least learn what it takes to log and monitor a stream of information, whether it be weather or seismographs.

reporter@sidneyherald.com