Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Quake Catcher Network
I do appreciate your response and thoughts on how it would be difficult to collect data regularly. I am hoping to install an XO-accessible weather station in Uganda this summer. A device will monitor the sensor and students can collect and post the data on their own schedule. A large-scale project could start by choosing a simpler project where students send reports about what they see. Last December I was on a call with DigiLiteracy.org and Cornell's volunteer science program. Cornell is interested in bird counts from OLPC schools in the US, India, and Latin America. They also have a bilingual Celebrate Urban Birds program for city schools. Here is a report about their work with a school in Costa Rica: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/netcommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1693 I would be happy to help in bringing this program back to life. We have put digital graphs, cameras, maps, and networks in schools around the world; it would be amazing if we can connect them with practical science projects. Regards, Nick Doiron On Sun, April 18, 2010 11:44 pm, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote: Provincia San Luis in Argentina is doing an amazing project of calculating the carbon footprint of every community in the Provincia, the kids go house byhouse interviewing the families on what kind of appliances they have, number of lightbulbs, etc. Classmates running winnows, alas. Please disregard the rest of my response below - I'm into nonsense, no need to take any of that seriously, I just find it somewhat quaint I fell into that, so I'm leaving it there as to massive data gathering, something on the lines of weather projects could be fascinating, with adequate sensors. Anyway, so far we haven't even been able to figure out even what it is that kids use their computers for, which simply would require to see / spider / datamine the Journals. To assume that we will be able to have kids regularly upload information, and also somehow will we manage to get them previously the proper sensors... Now, with *adequate* data processing, having weather data moving across a locality with a couple hundred sensors *accurately* located would be terrific, especially cross referencing that with satellite data and doing it over a significant span of time. Same difficulty with anything of this kind. It's cute this was originally sold as something that would use accelerometers in computers, but, oh, it turns out you need separate sensors. I've seen a few very clever Science Fair seismic sensors, but even the cheapest ones can run beyond what is practical to consider as individual expenses. And don't forget calibrating them, etc. I would be surprised a sensor that actually can give useful information would cost less than an XO! On 04/18/2010 09:39 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi Nick, Thanks for the link to the Science For Citizens site. Sounds like most of these projects are for the US only. I wonder if there are similar projects in other countries? Some really nice lessons could be developed for students to do with their XOs with web access. Does anyone know of others? Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Quake Catcher Network
I have some contact with http://www.globe.gov and had the chance to show off two OLPC XO-1 laptops a couple of years ago at their office in Denver. I am still a current GLOBE trainer in Melbourne. Would you like me to make contact with them regarding membership of GLOBE? It would be great for your Uganda data to become part of our global weather data-set. Regards Roland On 20 April 2010 07:49, Nicholas Doiron ndoi...@andrew.cmu.edu wrote: I do appreciate your response and thoughts on how it would be difficult to collect data regularly. I am hoping to install an XO-accessible weather station in Uganda this summer. A device will monitor the sensor and students can collect and post the data on their own schedule. A large-scale project could start by choosing a simpler project where students send reports about what they see. Last December I was on a call with DigiLiteracy.org and Cornell's volunteer science program. Cornell is interested in bird counts from OLPC schools in the US, India, and Latin America. They also have a bilingual Celebrate Urban Birds program for city schools. Here is a report about their work with a school in Costa Rica: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/netcommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1693 I would be happy to help in bringing this program back to life. We have put digital graphs, cameras, maps, and networks in schools around the world; it would be amazing if we can connect them with practical science projects. Regards, Nick Doiron On Sun, April 18, 2010 11:44 pm, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote: Provincia San Luis in Argentina is doing an amazing project of calculating the carbon footprint of every community in the Provincia, the kids go house byhouse interviewing the families on what kind of appliances they have, number of lightbulbs, etc. Classmates running winnows, alas. Please disregard the rest of my response below - I'm into nonsense, no need to take any of that seriously, I just find it somewhat quaint I fell into that, so I'm leaving it there as to massive data gathering, something on the lines of weather projects could be fascinating, with adequate sensors. Anyway, so far we haven't even been able to figure out even what it is that kids use their computers for, which simply would require to see / spider / datamine the Journals. To assume that we will be able to have kids regularly upload information, and also somehow will we manage to get them previously the proper sensors... Now, with *adequate* data processing, having weather data moving across a locality with a couple hundred sensors *accurately* located would be terrific, especially cross referencing that with satellite data and doing it over a significant span of time. Same difficulty with anything of this kind. It's cute this was originally sold as something that would use accelerometers in computers, but, oh, it turns out you need separate sensors. I've seen a few very clever Science Fair seismic sensors, but even the cheapest ones can run beyond what is practical to consider as individual expenses. And don't forget calibrating them, etc. I would be surprised a sensor that actually can give useful information would cost less than an XO! On 04/18/2010 09:39 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi Nick, Thanks for the link to the Science For Citizens site. Sounds like most of these projects are for the US only. I wonder if there are similar projects in other countries? Some really nice lessons could be developed for students to do with their XOs with web access. Does anyone know of others? Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has. --Margaret Mead ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Quake Catcher Network
Hi Nick and All, Yes, Cornell's Ornithology Lab has some wonderful citizen science programs. I have enjoyed participating in their annual Great Backyard Bird Count a couple of times. The CoCoRaHS project, based at Colorado State University is also a nice activity for children (and adults like me) in the United States. I bought and installed their rain gauge and report regularly during the months I live in Montana (usually June through September). http://www.cocorahs.org/ I see no reason why this sort of project couldn't be adapted for children in developing countries by having them make rain gauges from materials on hand such as empty food containers. An Activity could be written that would include instructions for making a gauge and calibrating it (area of a circle and other calculations needed), a chart for recording data, mapping, making graphs. and other things. Simple, inexpensive thermometers could be purchased and they could also make a simple anemometer. There are lots of web sites with instructions for making both a rain gauge and an anemometer. There are even directions for a barometer (but I wonder how effective it would be?). Each child could have his/her own weather station or groups living in the same neighborhood could make and share one. Data could be collected just on a community basis (it is amazing how much difference there can be between places just a few hundred yards or meters apart). If a central data gathering station could be set up on a county or provence wide basis, children in many schools could share data and research it. Maps could be online similar to the ones on CoCoRaHS. Children could try their hand at weather forecasting, . oh,my! I could go on and on! This could be a very fun, educational, and useful activity! Any developers want to collaborate on an Weather Activity? I'd love to be the educational consultant on it! Caryl (who in a former life taught both middle school and high school science and math) Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:49:47 -0400 Subject: Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Quake Catcher Network From: ndoi...@andrew.cmu.edu To: yamap...@gmail.com CC: cbige...@hotmail.com; s...@lists.sugarlabs.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; support-g...@lists.laptop.org I do appreciate your response and thoughts on how it would be difficult to collect data regularly. I am hoping to install an XO-accessible weather station in Uganda this summer. A device will monitor the sensor and students can collect and post the data on their own schedule. A large-scale project could start by choosing a simpler project where students send reports about what they see. Last December I was on a call with DigiLiteracy.org and Cornell's volunteer science program. Cornell is interested in bird counts from OLPC schools in the US, India, and Latin America. They also have a bilingual Celebrate Urban Birds program for city schools. Here is a report about their work with a school in Costa Rica: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/netcommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1693 I would be happy to help in bringing this program back to life. We have put digital graphs, cameras, maps, and networks in schools around the world; it would be amazing if we can connect them with practical science projects. Regards, Nick Doiron On Sun, April 18, 2010 11:44 pm, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote: Provincia San Luis in Argentina is doing an amazing project of calculating the carbon footprint of every community in the Provincia, the kids go house byhouse interviewing the families on what kind of appliances they have, number of lightbulbs, etc. Classmates running winnows, alas. Please disregard the rest of my response below - I'm into nonsense, no need to take any of that seriously, I just find it somewhat quaint I fell into that, so I'm leaving it there as to massive data gathering, something on the lines of weather projects could be fascinating, with adequate sensors. Anyway, so far we haven't even been able to figure out even what it is that kids use their computers for, which simply would require to see / spider / datamine the Journals. To assume that we will be able to have kids regularly upload information, and also somehow will we manage to get them previously the proper sensors... Now, with *adequate* data processing, having weather data moving across a locality with a couple hundred sensors *accurately* located would be terrific, especially cross referencing that with satellite data and doing it over a significant span of time. Same difficulty with anything of this kind. It's cute this was originally sold as something that would use accelerometers in computers, but, oh, it turns out you need separate sensors. I've seen a few very clever Science Fair seismic sensors, but even the cheapest ones can run beyond what is practical to consider as individual expenses. And don't forget calibrating them, etc
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Quake Catcher Network
Hi Nick, Thanks for the link to the Science For Citizens site. Sounds like most of these projects are for the US only. I wonder if there are similar projects in other countries? Some really nice lessons could be developed for students to do with their XOs with web access. Does anyone know of others? Caryl Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:18:15 -0400 From: ndoi...@andrew.cmu.edu To: support-g...@lists.laptop.org CC: s...@lists.sugarlabs.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: Re: [support-gang] [IAEP] Quake Catcher Network The accuracy of an individual sensor, yes, is suspect. But that's why Stanford is asking for many sensors to be registered -- a thousand or laptops moving simultaneously (or in outgoing waves) could triangulate the location of an earthquake before the waves even register at the main USGS seismometers. These projects also connect the kids to science in a direct way. Most volunteer science projects are a bit more hands-on and a little less hardware-intensive. I've been interested for awhile in seeing the laptops connected to a project such as this -- see http://www.scienceforcitizens.net/ for some more examples =) Regards, Nick Doiron On Sun, April 18, 2010 8:04 pm, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote: Caryl, I think it is wonderful you do share about this. It is always interesting to see how some idea can have unreached effects and become a wish for more I have been quite involved in seismic monitoring in my day, and to imagine personal computers could be used for that, beats everything else this week as to wishful thinking turned into vaporware, even though I spent a lot of time reading so called evaluations of ICT for education, and there was that revival of the crank... Now, if you can, and abusing a lot on your patience, please do not see what I said as a criticism to you, or that you should not share with us this kind of stuff. Actually, for someone like me it is extremely valuable to be aware of what is going on out there, and in the absence of things that make sense completely, it does help me hugely to, well, hear about this kind of things, because at some level these do reflect real dreams and desires which are perfectly true and valid, even though their put into effect is not. I guess I could go into detail, but the basic reason this cannot work is separating real seismic data from any other, from steps close to the machine, to a car rolling outside... This of course will not stop a skilled grantwriter, who would offer to prepare software that can discriminate data. However, the nearly mathematically unsolvable problem is in separating *overlapping* data, which is the real reason they forbid cellphones on planes. That is why real seismeters are set underground, as far away from human activity as possible. On 04/18/2010 05:31 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi... Here is something intriguing I heard about on NPR yesterday. It is a Seismic Monitoring program that can run in the background on computers that have built-in accelerometers (newer Macs) or PCs with an external one with usb connection. The hope is to have a world wide network of computers sensing quakes, especially in places where there are many quakes. It is designed to be an educational project with schools involved doing citizen science (sort of like CoCoRaHS). They have interactive/educational software and seismic monitoring software. Disclaimer... I haven't tried the software yet so I can't recommend it one way or the other until I do. Does the XO have an accelerometer? No matter if it doesn't because it has usb ports to spare. Any chance of someone getting a version of the software to work on the XOs? Maybe one of our developers who knows what would have to be done to get it to work on the XO could contact the Quake Catcher Network and ask it they could do it? Here is a link to the site: http://qcn.stanford.edu/downloads/ Looks like it is based at Stanford. Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] Quake Catcher Network
Provincia San Luis in Argentina is doing an amazing project of calculating the carbon footprint of every community in the Provincia, the kids go house byhouse interviewing the families on what kind of appliances they have, number of lightbulbs, etc. Classmates running winnows, alas. Please disregard the rest of my response below - I'm into nonsense, no need to take any of that seriously, I just find it somewhat quaint I fell into that, so I'm leaving it there as to massive data gathering, something on the lines of weather projects could be fascinating, with adequate sensors. Anyway, so far we haven't even been able to figure out even what it is that kids use their computers for, which simply would require to see / spider / datamine the Journals. To assume that we will be able to have kids regularly upload information, and also somehow will we manage to get them previously the proper sensors... Now, with *adequate* data processing, having weather data moving across a locality with a couple hundred sensors *accurately* located would be terrific, especially cross referencing that with satellite data and doing it over a significant span of time. Same difficulty with anything of this kind. It's cute this was originally sold as something that would use accelerometers in computers, but, oh, it turns out you need separate sensors. I've seen a few very clever Science Fair seismic sensors, but even the cheapest ones can run beyond what is practical to consider as individual expenses. And don't forget calibrating them, etc. I would be surprised a sensor that actually can give useful information would cost less than an XO! On 04/18/2010 09:39 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi Nick, Thanks for the link to the Science For Citizens site. Sounds like most of these projects are for the US only. I wonder if there are similar projects in other countries? Some really nice lessons could be developed for students to do with their XOs with web access. Does anyone know of others? Caryl Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:18:15 -0400 From: ndoi...@andrew.cmu.edu To: support-g...@lists.laptop.org CC: s...@lists.sugarlabs.org; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: Re: [support-gang] [IAEP] Quake Catcher Network The accuracy of an individual sensor, yes, is suspect. But that's why Stanford is asking for many sensors to be registered -- a thousand or laptops moving simultaneously (or in outgoing waves) could triangulate the location of an earthquake before the waves even register at the main USGS seismometers. These projects also connect the kids to science in a direct way. Most volunteer science projects are a bit more hands-on and a little less hardware-intensive. I've been interested for awhile in seeing the laptops connected to a project such as this -- see http://www.scienceforcitizens.net/ for some more examples =) Regards, Nick Doiron On Sun, April 18, 2010 8:04 pm, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote: Caryl, I think it is wonderful you do share about this. It is always interesting to see how some idea can have unreached effects and become a wish for more I have been quite involved in seismic monitoring in my day, and to imagine personal computers could be used for that, beats everything else this week as to wishful thinking turned into vaporware, even though I spent a lot of time reading so called evaluations of ICT for education, and there was that revival of the crank... Now, if you can, and abusing a lot on your patience, please do not see what I said as a criticism to you, or that you should not share with us this kind of stuff. Actually, for someone like me it is extremely valuable to be aware of what is going on out there, and in the absence of things that make sense completely, it does help me hugely to, well, hear about this kind of things, because at some level these do reflect real dreams and desires which are perfectly true and valid, even though their put into effect is not. I guess I could go into detail, but the basic reason this cannot work is separating real seismic data from any other, from steps close to the machine, to a car rolling outside... This of course will not stop a skilled grantwriter, who would offer to prepare software that can discriminate data. However, the nearly mathematically unsolvable problem is in separating *overlapping* data, which is the real reason they forbid cellphones on planes. That is why real seismeters are set underground, as far away from human activity as possible. On 04/18/2010 05:31 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote: Hi... Here is something intriguing I heard about on NPR yesterday. It is a Seismic Monitoring program that can run in the background on computers that have built-in accelerometers (newer Macs) or PCs with an external one with usb connection. The hope is to have a world wide network of computers sensing quakes,
