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Infusing Cyber-Physical Systems into a Standards-Based K-12 Curriculum
Mitchell L. Neilsen, Nathan Bean
Dept. of Computing and Information Sciences Kansas State University Manhattan, KS, USA { neilsen@ksu.edu, nhb7817@ksu.edu }
Jacqueline Spears
Center for Science Education Kansas State University Manhattan, KS, USA { jdspears@k-state.edu }
Abstract— This paper describes an innovative, new Graduate STEM Fellowship Program that incorporates contemporary embedded real-time sensors and system design into the existing K-12 curriculum. Unlike other programs, more focus is placed on Technology (T) and Engineering (E), and less focus is placed on Science (S) and Mathematics (M). An underlying goal of the program is to link sensors and embedded systems research with science and technology curriculum and create a community of learning, teaching, and mutual support between researchers and K-12 education participants from rural backgrounds. Keywords: cyber-physical systems, K-12 curriculum, education, realtime embedded systems, sensors.
I. INTRODUCTION There is a well-recognized national need to inspire more interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines among K-12 students. These disciplines are needed to fulfill the requirements of careers in information technology and innovation. Virtually all engineering disciplines have seen an increased emphasis on the use of computing technology and cyber-physical systems. It is important for us to increase the number of students from the K-12 level interested in pursuing STEM careers with an emphasis on cyber-physical systems. When young students get excited about science and engineering as a result of experiences in school or informal educational settings, they are more likely to pursue classes that properly prepare them for success in undergraduate and graduate programs in STEM fields. Thus, there has been an increased interest in developing programs that are designed to enhance teacher preparation and classroom support for the type of experiences and content themes that inspire students to view STEM fields as an achievable, exciting option for them. There has been an attempt to better understand why there has been a decrease in the number of Computer Science courses taught at the K-12 level in the US [1]. The top three reasons cited by K-12 teachers include: the rapid changes in technology, a lack of staff support, and a lack of curriculum resources. As noted by Shreck and Latifi, it is important to develop an infrastructure in which teachers have adequate support and where they are able to change with the technology. This helps them maintain the interest of K-12 students [2].
As these programs and curriculum resources are developed and assessed, it is important to disseminate the results of such initiatives so that those with similar goals can consider how to adopt or adapt the successful elements of other programs into their own programs. Although many of the details are omitted, the goal of this paper is to report on our GK-12 program and some of the innovative curriculum modules that have been developed and used successfully in a K-12 setting. The U.S. National Science Foundation’s program to support Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK12) strives to improve graduate students’ communication, teaching, collaboration, and team building skills through professional training, interactions with faculty, and work in the classroom with K-12 teachers and students. By working with K-12 teachers to integrate their knowledge and research to enhance the classroom, graduate fellows and faculty members also have the opportunity to build partnerships with schools and teachers, and to enrich learning opportunities and increase motivation for K-12 students. One of the observed outcomes for graduate students is the enhancement of their ability to communicate effectively across cyber and physical domains. The graduate fellows also serve as role models for the students that they work with, and they talk with the students about the diverse and exciting careers that can be pursued by those who are interested in STEM disciplines. From this, both graduate students and K-12 students come to recognize the need to engage in lifelong learning. Although the main focus of the GK-12 program is on the development of graduate students, this paper will focus more on the innovative K-12 aspects of the program and the modules developed to date for use in the K-12 classroom. We will also identify some of the challenges faced by researchers and fellows in integrating cyber-physical systems into the K-12 classroom. II. INSIGHT GK-12 STEM FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM Infusing System Design and Sensor Technology in Education (INSIGHT) is the title given to an innovative GK12 STEM Fellowship Program at Kansas State University. Our program focuses on integrating cyber-physical systems with computing and information science through a standardsbased science, technology, and engineering curricula. The underlying goals of the program are to: enhance the
usefulness, practicality and relevance of sensor, computing, and information technology education by linking embedded systems research for fellows to science and technology curriculum and to practice for classroom teachers; support technology in rural Kansas through two of the most important aspects impacting rural life in Kansas: agriculture and health; improve the teaching and learning of sensor technology and engineering design in middle school and high school classrooms; and create a community of learning, teaching and mutual support between the both the higher education and precollege education participants from rural backgrounds. Project activities team GK-12 fellows with K-12 STEM teachers through summer and academic year training and orientation, and place the fellows in the classrooms of rural Kansas schools. In the summer, project staff provides fellows with training with hands-on systems, STEM concepts and development, Kansas Curriculum Standards, and classroom instruction methodology. Participating teachers also have two weeks of training and orientation focusing on sensor technology, computing and information science topics, selected science and technology content areas and the use of appropriate pedagogical and assessment strategies. During the academic year, fellows support two participating teachers in the classroom an average of two times a week in their area with content-specific sensor technology and computing and information sciences. Program staff provides semester-long professional development opportunities via guided research and investigations of practical applications of technology integration on agricultural farm fields and within the classroom. Weekly meetings between project staff and fellows provide supervision and feedback. Sensor systems are poised to revolutionize the way that the physical world is monitored and field experiments are performed with remote, automated real-time data collection and feedback replacing traditional manual methods. The development of cyber-physical infrastructure represents the next step in enabling applications wherein physical entities (humans with body parameters such as heart and respiratory rates, crops with different fertility and growth rates, etc.) and cyber-subsystems collaborate and interact to achieve a common goal. For example, in our health-care systems, the cyberinfrastructure can augment the capabilities of the hospital staff in patient monitoring, issuing alerts, and coordinating usage of resources. Likewise, in rural Kansas, remote monitoring can enable elderly residents to stay in their own homes safely for an improved quality of life and an on-site pharmacist is replaced with a robot that can dispense prescriptions to elderly patients and allow patients to consult with a pharmacist remotely. As another example, although farm equipment operators can operate with a local visual view of the field, cyber and remote sensing infrastructure in the field can assist them by providing correlated GIS, climatic and vegetation data to support variable rate application of chemicals with precision using GPS. This results in both economic and environmental benefits [3].
Typically, these systems are difficult to develop because their development requires knowledge about many parts of a complex system involving a number of heterogeneous subsystems and components [4]. Their design is often a multidisciplinary exercise involving a variety of domain experts with different views of the system, and there are few formal techniques that can be used to address the integration of individual components. Designers often work on subsystems without fully understanding its impact on other components and the rest of the system. Design of such realtime embedded sensor systems has been the focus of researchers from several departments at Kansas State University. Fellows from different engineering and computer science departments learn to function effectively on several multi-disciplinary teams. Likewise, we try to pair teachers with different skill sets on a team at the school district level so that they have an opportunity to interact with colleagues on a multi-disciplinary team. For example, a science teacher could be paired with a technology teacher so that the experiments and theory used in the science classroom can be augmented with the technology developed in the agriculture education classroom. This program also represents a unique synergistic opportunity for us to collaborate with our K-12 colleagues in a similar manner, and create and strengthen mutually beneficial partnerships with the many rural school systems in Kansas. These partnerships enhance the education of K-State’s technologically-oriented graduate and undergraduate students while simultaneously advancing computing, science, and engineering education in rural Kansas middle school and high school classrooms. The program places an average of eight graduate students each year in up to eight different rural Kansas schools twice a week to assist an average of sixteen K-12 school teachers per year in integrating sensor, computing, and information technology into standards-based science and technology curricula and instruction. Sensor technology is the enabling element that pervades the entire science, engineering and technology curriculum, rather than as an entirely new and separate subject or curriculum area, whose introduction would be more problematic. Deductive reasoning, analysis and synthesis, algorithmic problem solving and design, and inquiry techniques are at the heart of each of these disciplines. Regardless of the scientific area, students must learn to formulate questions and hypotheses, plan experiments, conduct systematic observations, interpret and analyze data, draw conclusions and communicate results, using powerful classroom tools. Indeed, these skills are tested in a statewide assessment of students’ achievement in science, engineering and technology. Aligning instruction with science, engineering and technology standards requires significant changes to classroom practice, from content, activities, and assessment to classroom management, interaction with students and learning tools. This program has helped to establish hands-on engineering and technology development as a foundational skill for vocational agriculture, and other areas. Instead of focusing on Mathematics and Science, the novelty of this project is on its primary focus on Technology and
Engineering. In the Environmental Science and Natural Resources Section in the Kansas Standards for Agricultural Education, an important new standard is on Sustainable Agriculture. Unfortunately, many of the rural school districts in Kansas don’t have the resources or technical expertise to go beyond the basics of just reading about sustainable agriculture. Canonical CPS Projects are a valuable asset to enhance public education on the nature and potential of CPS. The interaction with our graduate students, serving as resident scientists and engineers, is essential to encouraging teachers to step outside the box and explore new technologies that enhance their classroom teaching. III. SAMPLE CURRICULAR MODULES In this section, we give a brief overview of a few modules that have been developed and/or delivered by fellows in K-12 classrooms. Details and lesson plans can be found on-line at, http://gk12.cis.ksu.edu, through our GK-12 program web-site. A. Water Filter In this activity students were asked to create their own sediment water filter using a water bottle and some basic materials. Some of the materials include: flour, sugar, sand, gravel, plastic beads, cotton balls, etc. The students were only allowed to use three materials and it was up to them to create the best filter in the class based on the types of materials selected, and order the materials were placed into the filter. The dirty water, shown in the upper-left corner in Figure 1, is stirred occasionally to keep the sediment suspended, and the sediment shown in the upper-right is used to test filtered samples.
sensors deployed in the field and connected by a three-tiered wireless sensor network [5,6,7]. A solar panel is used to power the middle tier of the wireless sensor network (Fig. 2, lower right). To measure sediment discharge, turpidity sensors developed here at Kansas State University are organized into a wireless sensor network, and they continuously monitor sediment discharge. The system is organized to automatically adjust sensor reading rates based on the data to limit the power requirements of the wireless sensors. The data is then transmitted to a wireless base station, and on to a centralized database from which the data can be analyzed [5,6,7]. Sediment concentration is defined as the weight of suspended soil particles per unit volume of water. Turbidity is usually referred to as the optical properties of suspended/dissolved materials in water on transmitting, reflecting, absorbing, and scattering light. Thus, traditional turbidity sensors are not sediment-concentration sensors. A sediment sensor developed in this study uses LEDs that emit lights at three visible and infrared feature wavelengths, which were selected through a spectroscopic analysis, with light detectors arranged at different angles from the light sources. Statistical models established based on test data allowed the sensor to be basically insensitive to non-soil, suspended and dissolved objects, such as algae, organic matter, and various microorganisms, and less sensitive to soil texture.
Figure 2. Wireless sensor network Several sensors were placed at low-water crossings at Fort Riley and Fort Benning for long-term, sediment-runoff monitoring [6]. The sensor case has been modified to improve its waterproof capability. Difficulties encountered during the long-term tests included signal drifting and occultation of the optical lenses by algae and particles. Modifications were made in the sensors and software to solve the problems [5].
Figure 1. Sediment water sensor and filters B. Wireless Sensor Network to Measure Sediment in Streams At the high school level, students take samples using a handheld sensor (Fig. 2, top left) and take readings using sediment
into the curriculum. At the K-12 level, it is challenging for the teachers to find enough time in the schedule to fit advanced material into the curriculum. Unfortunately, too much time is spent in testing and remedial education. However, interesting problems can be adapted at many different grade levels, even at the elementary level. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0948019. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Figure 3. Sediment concentration measurement C. Water Sediment Concentration At the elementary level, sediment concentrations in water are measured manually using filter paper and drying equipment after collecting samples at a local lake. They also compared the results they obtained with the measurement taken using an electronic sediment sensor as shown in Figure 3. D. Olympic Bar Acceleration High school students in weight lifting classes at Wamego High School use Velcro to strap on a Wiimote to an Olympic bar to measure each student's acceleration in all directions while doing the bench press lift. A graph of the accelerometer values is projected onto the ceiling of the weight room so that students can watch their acceleration and movements during the lift. REFERENCES [1] David Nagel, "Computer science courses on the decline", The Journal: Transforming Education through Technology, Aug. 4, 2009. [2] Stephanie Shreck and Shahram Latifi, "K-12 computer education deficiencies in Nevada", in Proc. of the 2011 International Conference on Frontiers in Education: Computer Science and Computer Engineering (FECS'11), pp. 114-118, 2011. [3] M.N. Rao, D.A. Waits, M.L. Neilsen, "A GIS-based modeling approach for implementation of sustainable farm management practices", Environmental Modeling and Software, Vol. 15, pp. 745-753, 2006. [4] J. Hatcliff, G. Singh, D. Andresen, and S. Warren, "Observations and directions for high-confidence sensor networks in the real world", In Proc. of the Composable Systems Technology for High Confidence CyberPhysical Systems Workshop, 2007. [5] N. Wang, N. Zhang, and M. Wang, “Wireless sensors in agriculture and food industry--Recent development and future perspective”, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 1-14, 2006. [6] Y. Zhang, N. Zhang, G. Grimm, C. Johnson, D. Oarrd and J. Steichen, "Long-term field test of an optical sedimentconcentration sensor at low-water stream crossings (LWSC)", ASABE Paper No. 072137, St. Joseph, Michigan, 2007. [7] J. Wei, N. Zhang, D. Lenhert, M.L. Neilsen, M. Mizuno, and J. Schmidt, “Using smart transducer technology to facilitate precision agriculture systems”, In Proceedings of the ASAE Annual International Meeting (ASAE Paper 03-3145), Las Vegas, NV, July 27-30, 2003. [8] John Maloney, Mitchel Resnick, Natalie Rusk, Brian Silverman, and Evelyn Eastmond. 2010. The Scratch Programming Language and Environment. Transactions on Computer Education. 10, 4, Article 16 (November 2010), pp. 16:1-16:15. [9] M.L. Neilsen, D.H. Lenhert, M. Mizuno, G. Singh, J. Staver, N. Zhang, K. Kramer, W.J. Rust, Q. Stoll, M.S. Uddin, “Encouraging interest in engineering through embedded system design”, In American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE) Computers in Education Journal, Vol. XV, No. 3, pp. 68-77, July 2005.
Figure 4. Bench press acceleration IV. CONCLUSIONS Overall, the INSIGHT GK-12 program has been very effective and is viewed very positively by all participants. In this third year of the program, we plan to provide a smoother transition for the participating teachers and fellows just joining the program. Having a cohort of veterans that can serve as mentors will smooth the transition for incoming participants. There is an ongoing challenge to identify age-appropriate cyber-physical systems and research, and to think out-of-thebox to identify ways in which the systems can be incorporated
Mitchell L. Neilsen, Nathan Bean
Dept. of Computing and Information Sciences Kansas State University Manhattan, KS, USA { neilsen@ksu.edu, nhb7817@ksu.edu }
Jacqueline Spears
Center for Science Education Kansas State University Manhattan, KS, USA { jdspears@k-state.edu }
Abstract— This paper describes an innovative, new Graduate STEM Fellowship Program that incorporates contemporary embedded real-time sensors and system design into the existing K-12 curriculum. Unlike other programs, more focus is placed on Technology (T) and Engineering (E), and less focus is placed on Science (S) and Mathematics (M). An underlying goal of the program is to link sensors and embedded systems research with science and technology curriculum and create a community of learning, teaching, and mutual support between researchers and K-12 education participants from rural backgrounds. Keywords: cyber-physical systems, K-12 curriculum, education, realtime embedded systems, sensors.
I. INTRODUCTION There is a well-recognized national need to inspire more interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines among K-12 students. These disciplines are needed to fulfill the requirements of careers in information technology and innovation. Virtually all engineering disciplines have seen an increased emphasis on the use of computing technology and cyber-physical systems. It is important for us to increase the number of students from the K-12 level interested in pursuing STEM careers with an emphasis on cyber-physical systems. When young students get excited about science and engineering as a result of experiences in school or informal educational settings, they are more likely to pursue classes that properly prepare them for success in undergraduate and graduate programs in STEM fields. Thus, there has been an increased interest in developing programs that are designed to enhance teacher preparation and classroom support for the type of experiences and content themes that inspire students to view STEM fields as an achievable, exciting option for them. There has been an attempt to better understand why there has been a decrease in the number of Computer Science courses taught at the K-12 level in the US [1]. The top three reasons cited by K-12 teachers include: the rapid changes in technology, a lack of staff support, and a lack of curriculum resources. As noted by Shreck and Latifi, it is important to develop an infrastructure in which teachers have adequate support and where they are able to change with the technology. This helps them maintain the interest of K-12 students [2].
As these programs and curriculum resources are developed and assessed, it is important to disseminate the results of such initiatives so that those with similar goals can consider how to adopt or adapt the successful elements of other programs into their own programs. Although many of the details are omitted, the goal of this paper is to report on our GK-12 program and some of the innovative curriculum modules that have been developed and used successfully in a K-12 setting. The U.S. National Science Foundation’s program to support Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK12) strives to improve graduate students’ communication, teaching, collaboration, and team building skills through professional training, interactions with faculty, and work in the classroom with K-12 teachers and students. By working with K-12 teachers to integrate their knowledge and research to enhance the classroom, graduate fellows and faculty members also have the opportunity to build partnerships with schools and teachers, and to enrich learning opportunities and increase motivation for K-12 students. One of the observed outcomes for graduate students is the enhancement of their ability to communicate effectively across cyber and physical domains. The graduate fellows also serve as role models for the students that they work with, and they talk with the students about the diverse and exciting careers that can be pursued by those who are interested in STEM disciplines. From this, both graduate students and K-12 students come to recognize the need to engage in lifelong learning. Although the main focus of the GK-12 program is on the development of graduate students, this paper will focus more on the innovative K-12 aspects of the program and the modules developed to date for use in the K-12 classroom. We will also identify some of the challenges faced by researchers and fellows in integrating cyber-physical systems into the K-12 classroom. II. INSIGHT GK-12 STEM FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM Infusing System Design and Sensor Technology in Education (INSIGHT) is the title given to an innovative GK12 STEM Fellowship Program at Kansas State University. Our program focuses on integrating cyber-physical systems with computing and information science through a standardsbased science, technology, and engineering curricula. The underlying goals of the program are to: enhance the
usefulness, practicality and relevance of sensor, computing, and information technology education by linking embedded systems research for fellows to science and technology curriculum and to practice for classroom teachers; support technology in rural Kansas through two of the most important aspects impacting rural life in Kansas: agriculture and health; improve the teaching and learning of sensor technology and engineering design in middle school and high school classrooms; and create a community of learning, teaching and mutual support between the both the higher education and precollege education participants from rural backgrounds. Project activities team GK-12 fellows with K-12 STEM teachers through summer and academic year training and orientation, and place the fellows in the classrooms of rural Kansas schools. In the summer, project staff provides fellows with training with hands-on systems, STEM concepts and development, Kansas Curriculum Standards, and classroom instruction methodology. Participating teachers also have two weeks of training and orientation focusing on sensor technology, computing and information science topics, selected science and technology content areas and the use of appropriate pedagogical and assessment strategies. During the academic year, fellows support two participating teachers in the classroom an average of two times a week in their area with content-specific sensor technology and computing and information sciences. Program staff provides semester-long professional development opportunities via guided research and investigations of practical applications of technology integration on agricultural farm fields and within the classroom. Weekly meetings between project staff and fellows provide supervision and feedback. Sensor systems are poised to revolutionize the way that the physical world is monitored and field experiments are performed with remote, automated real-time data collection and feedback replacing traditional manual methods. The development of cyber-physical infrastructure represents the next step in enabling applications wherein physical entities (humans with body parameters such as heart and respiratory rates, crops with different fertility and growth rates, etc.) and cyber-subsystems collaborate and interact to achieve a common goal. For example, in our health-care systems, the cyberinfrastructure can augment the capabilities of the hospital staff in patient monitoring, issuing alerts, and coordinating usage of resources. Likewise, in rural Kansas, remote monitoring can enable elderly residents to stay in their own homes safely for an improved quality of life and an on-site pharmacist is replaced with a robot that can dispense prescriptions to elderly patients and allow patients to consult with a pharmacist remotely. As another example, although farm equipment operators can operate with a local visual view of the field, cyber and remote sensing infrastructure in the field can assist them by providing correlated GIS, climatic and vegetation data to support variable rate application of chemicals with precision using GPS. This results in both economic and environmental benefits [3].
Typically, these systems are difficult to develop because their development requires knowledge about many parts of a complex system involving a number of heterogeneous subsystems and components [4]. Their design is often a multidisciplinary exercise involving a variety of domain experts with different views of the system, and there are few formal techniques that can be used to address the integration of individual components. Designers often work on subsystems without fully understanding its impact on other components and the rest of the system. Design of such realtime embedded sensor systems has been the focus of researchers from several departments at Kansas State University. Fellows from different engineering and computer science departments learn to function effectively on several multi-disciplinary teams. Likewise, we try to pair teachers with different skill sets on a team at the school district level so that they have an opportunity to interact with colleagues on a multi-disciplinary team. For example, a science teacher could be paired with a technology teacher so that the experiments and theory used in the science classroom can be augmented with the technology developed in the agriculture education classroom. This program also represents a unique synergistic opportunity for us to collaborate with our K-12 colleagues in a similar manner, and create and strengthen mutually beneficial partnerships with the many rural school systems in Kansas. These partnerships enhance the education of K-State’s technologically-oriented graduate and undergraduate students while simultaneously advancing computing, science, and engineering education in rural Kansas middle school and high school classrooms. The program places an average of eight graduate students each year in up to eight different rural Kansas schools twice a week to assist an average of sixteen K-12 school teachers per year in integrating sensor, computing, and information technology into standards-based science and technology curricula and instruction. Sensor technology is the enabling element that pervades the entire science, engineering and technology curriculum, rather than as an entirely new and separate subject or curriculum area, whose introduction would be more problematic. Deductive reasoning, analysis and synthesis, algorithmic problem solving and design, and inquiry techniques are at the heart of each of these disciplines. Regardless of the scientific area, students must learn to formulate questions and hypotheses, plan experiments, conduct systematic observations, interpret and analyze data, draw conclusions and communicate results, using powerful classroom tools. Indeed, these skills are tested in a statewide assessment of students’ achievement in science, engineering and technology. Aligning instruction with science, engineering and technology standards requires significant changes to classroom practice, from content, activities, and assessment to classroom management, interaction with students and learning tools. This program has helped to establish hands-on engineering and technology development as a foundational skill for vocational agriculture, and other areas. Instead of focusing on Mathematics and Science, the novelty of this project is on its primary focus on Technology and
Engineering. In the Environmental Science and Natural Resources Section in the Kansas Standards for Agricultural Education, an important new standard is on Sustainable Agriculture. Unfortunately, many of the rural school districts in Kansas don’t have the resources or technical expertise to go beyond the basics of just reading about sustainable agriculture. Canonical CPS Projects are a valuable asset to enhance public education on the nature and potential of CPS. The interaction with our graduate students, serving as resident scientists and engineers, is essential to encouraging teachers to step outside the box and explore new technologies that enhance their classroom teaching. III. SAMPLE CURRICULAR MODULES In this section, we give a brief overview of a few modules that have been developed and/or delivered by fellows in K-12 classrooms. Details and lesson plans can be found on-line at, http://gk12.cis.ksu.edu, through our GK-12 program web-site. A. Water Filter In this activity students were asked to create their own sediment water filter using a water bottle and some basic materials. Some of the materials include: flour, sugar, sand, gravel, plastic beads, cotton balls, etc. The students were only allowed to use three materials and it was up to them to create the best filter in the class based on the types of materials selected, and order the materials were placed into the filter. The dirty water, shown in the upper-left corner in Figure 1, is stirred occasionally to keep the sediment suspended, and the sediment shown in the upper-right is used to test filtered samples.
sensors deployed in the field and connected by a three-tiered wireless sensor network [5,6,7]. A solar panel is used to power the middle tier of the wireless sensor network (Fig. 2, lower right). To measure sediment discharge, turpidity sensors developed here at Kansas State University are organized into a wireless sensor network, and they continuously monitor sediment discharge. The system is organized to automatically adjust sensor reading rates based on the data to limit the power requirements of the wireless sensors. The data is then transmitted to a wireless base station, and on to a centralized database from which the data can be analyzed [5,6,7]. Sediment concentration is defined as the weight of suspended soil particles per unit volume of water. Turbidity is usually referred to as the optical properties of suspended/dissolved materials in water on transmitting, reflecting, absorbing, and scattering light. Thus, traditional turbidity sensors are not sediment-concentration sensors. A sediment sensor developed in this study uses LEDs that emit lights at three visible and infrared feature wavelengths, which were selected through a spectroscopic analysis, with light detectors arranged at different angles from the light sources. Statistical models established based on test data allowed the sensor to be basically insensitive to non-soil, suspended and dissolved objects, such as algae, organic matter, and various microorganisms, and less sensitive to soil texture.
Figure 2. Wireless sensor network Several sensors were placed at low-water crossings at Fort Riley and Fort Benning for long-term, sediment-runoff monitoring [6]. The sensor case has been modified to improve its waterproof capability. Difficulties encountered during the long-term tests included signal drifting and occultation of the optical lenses by algae and particles. Modifications were made in the sensors and software to solve the problems [5].
Figure 1. Sediment water sensor and filters B. Wireless Sensor Network to Measure Sediment in Streams At the high school level, students take samples using a handheld sensor (Fig. 2, top left) and take readings using sediment
into the curriculum. At the K-12 level, it is challenging for the teachers to find enough time in the schedule to fit advanced material into the curriculum. Unfortunately, too much time is spent in testing and remedial education. However, interesting problems can be adapted at many different grade levels, even at the elementary level. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0948019. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Figure 3. Sediment concentration measurement C. Water Sediment Concentration At the elementary level, sediment concentrations in water are measured manually using filter paper and drying equipment after collecting samples at a local lake. They also compared the results they obtained with the measurement taken using an electronic sediment sensor as shown in Figure 3. D. Olympic Bar Acceleration High school students in weight lifting classes at Wamego High School use Velcro to strap on a Wiimote to an Olympic bar to measure each student's acceleration in all directions while doing the bench press lift. A graph of the accelerometer values is projected onto the ceiling of the weight room so that students can watch their acceleration and movements during the lift. REFERENCES [1] David Nagel, "Computer science courses on the decline", The Journal: Transforming Education through Technology, Aug. 4, 2009. [2] Stephanie Shreck and Shahram Latifi, "K-12 computer education deficiencies in Nevada", in Proc. of the 2011 International Conference on Frontiers in Education: Computer Science and Computer Engineering (FECS'11), pp. 114-118, 2011. [3] M.N. Rao, D.A. Waits, M.L. Neilsen, "A GIS-based modeling approach for implementation of sustainable farm management practices", Environmental Modeling and Software, Vol. 15, pp. 745-753, 2006. [4] J. Hatcliff, G. Singh, D. Andresen, and S. Warren, "Observations and directions for high-confidence sensor networks in the real world", In Proc. of the Composable Systems Technology for High Confidence CyberPhysical Systems Workshop, 2007. [5] N. Wang, N. Zhang, and M. Wang, “Wireless sensors in agriculture and food industry--Recent development and future perspective”, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 1-14, 2006. [6] Y. Zhang, N. Zhang, G. Grimm, C. Johnson, D. Oarrd and J. Steichen, "Long-term field test of an optical sedimentconcentration sensor at low-water stream crossings (LWSC)", ASABE Paper No. 072137, St. Joseph, Michigan, 2007. [7] J. Wei, N. Zhang, D. Lenhert, M.L. Neilsen, M. Mizuno, and J. Schmidt, “Using smart transducer technology to facilitate precision agriculture systems”, In Proceedings of the ASAE Annual International Meeting (ASAE Paper 03-3145), Las Vegas, NV, July 27-30, 2003. [8] John Maloney, Mitchel Resnick, Natalie Rusk, Brian Silverman, and Evelyn Eastmond. 2010. The Scratch Programming Language and Environment. Transactions on Computer Education. 10, 4, Article 16 (November 2010), pp. 16:1-16:15. [9] M.L. Neilsen, D.H. Lenhert, M. Mizuno, G. Singh, J. Staver, N. Zhang, K. Kramer, W.J. Rust, Q. Stoll, M.S. Uddin, “Encouraging interest in engineering through embedded system design”, In American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE) Computers in Education Journal, Vol. XV, No. 3, pp. 68-77, July 2005.
Figure 4. Bench press acceleration IV. CONCLUSIONS Overall, the INSIGHT GK-12 program has been very effective and is viewed very positively by all participants. In this third year of the program, we plan to provide a smoother transition for the participating teachers and fellows just joining the program. Having a cohort of veterans that can serve as mentors will smooth the transition for incoming participants. There is an ongoing challenge to identify age-appropriate cyber-physical systems and research, and to think out-of-thebox to identify ways in which the systems can be incorporated