Development of Sensor-Caching for Environmental GIS with the

GK-12 Classroom By: Louis Gutierrez (gutiela@cs.rpi.edu), Christopher Shing (shingc@rpi.edu), and Ron Eglash (eglash@rpi.edu)

NSF Triple Helix, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 12180

AAG 2012, New York City – Sesson 3156 Geospatial Technologies in the K-12 Classroom, February 26, 2012, 8:00AM-9:40AM

Ever since engineer David Ulmer “hid a treasure near his home,

posted the coordinates on the web, and challenged people to find

it” the concept of geocaching, that is a GPS enabled treasure

hunting game, has become a global phenomena [1]. As of this

writing, there are over one million caches worldwide. In the past

few years geocaching has found itself incorporated into the GK-

12 classroom, particularly for teaching subjects in history, math,

and technology [1-3]. However, lessons using geocaching have

yet to penetrate into the sciences. By incorporating low-fi

environmental sensors with the concept of geocaching we aim to

bridge the science gap. This combination of GPS technology

with low-fi sensors forms the bases of sensor-caching.

• Sensor-caching is a natural extension of geocaching

• Sensor-caching has 6 goals: build, find, sense, share, graph, and act.

• These goals originated and were developed in our 1st attempt while

making a universal environmental sensor.

• The universal environmental sensor got students to think about

environmental GIS. These activities created during this phase will

be instrumental to implementing the sensor-caching project in the

classroom.

• The universal environmental sensor was too expensive and

unreliable to maintain. A new sensor concept was needed.

• To reduce costs functionality was moved from “mostly on

hardware” to “mostly on software”

• A prototype was constructed using an Arduino microcontroller

• A prototype of the Android app and the user interface were created

• Continued improvement upon the previous website used for the

universal environmental sensor project have been made.

[1] A.R. Hurd and B.E. Schlatter, "Geocaching: 21st century hide-and-seek.,"

Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, vol. 76, no. 7, pp.

28-32, 2005.

[2] K. O'Hara, "Understanding Geocaching Practices and Motivations," in

CHI 2008 Proceedings, Florence, Italy, 2008, pp. 1177-1186.

[3] L. Matherson, V.H. Wright, C.T. Inman, and E.K. Wilson, "Get up, get out

with geocaching: engaging technology for the social studies classroom,"

Social Studies Research and Practice, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 80-85, 2008.

• Integration of the hardware, Android app, and website into a fluid

function system

• Development of an external power source to run the hardware for

lengths of time.

• Conduct sensor-caching activities within the GK-12 classroom.

Sensor-caching is environmental sensing

using a combination of open-source

technologies with a fun, GPS enabled

treasure hunting game. The objective of the

game is to locate a hidden sensor and

upload the sensed environmental data with

a mobile app to a website that visualizes

this information. The purpose of this research project is to

combine existing mobile technology with low-fi sensor devices

in respect to their ability to evaluate local environments,

facilitate environmental GK-12 education, contribute to a larger

body of science, and overall be fun.

BACKGROUND

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

RESULTS CONCLUSION

FUTURE WORK

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GOALS

BUILD SENSE

SHARE ACT

FIND

GRAPH

Focused on teaching students about GIS through sensors

Had students construct simple temperature sensors and field test (Build)

Had students use the RPI-ES01 universal environmental sensor (Sense)

Had students draw relevant data onto a large map and our website (Share)

Had students evaluate the information and discuss how mapping environmental

information is important to understand boundaries (Act)

PROS CONS

Hardware Open source architecture Short battery life, large size, lack of modularity,

difficulty in data transfer, expensive

Website Simple architecture Few data visualization options, slow interface,

no data validation, no 3rd party upload

Lessons Broad range of topics, including information

about sensors, data accuracy, mapping, etc

Lengthy, typically 2 hours.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is supported by the NSF under the GK-12 Triple Helix Program. 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.

Bluetooth

SD Logger/

Microcontroller

To Sensors →

Lessons Learned: Universal Environmental Sensors Project

Build Sense Share Act

RPI-ES01

Development of Sensor-caching