Students Go Wireless to Save Creek

A Montana middle school science class helps to clean up a polluted creek using computer interfacing and wireless technology

by Steve Paulson, Science Teacher, Lewiston, Montana

Deep in the heart of Montana's Big Sky Country, Lewistown's Big Spring Creek flows from what once was called the purest water source on the continent. Unfortunately, after decades of railroad misuse, pollutants consumed Big Spring Creek and turned the surrounding area into an algae-infested swamp. Today, an agricultural community of 6,000 flourishes where the rail yard used to be; its inhabitants are dedicated to returning the creek to its former glory.

A number of public and private contributors in our community are helping to clean up Big Spring Creek, and the eighth grade students in my life science classes have been doing their part since 1995. They regularly trek down to the creek to collect data and analyze its characteristics using remote interfaces and sensors. I don't use textbooks. We have eight computers and the students learn faster working at their own pace.

Last year my class and I teamed up with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Wireless Field Tests for Education project. Located more than 100 miles from the nearest Internet service provider, Lewistown Junior High aptly served the NSF project goal. NSF is field-testing a variety of wireless devices that can be integrated inexpensively into telecommunications networks (such as the Internet) to serve the broadest interests of public education and research. David Hughes, NSF co-chair of the project, set up a research grant to provide us with the scientific and communications equipment necessary to enable remote monitoring and ultimately contribute to restoration of Big Spring Creek.

Although monitoring the creek via the computer was fairly easy and straightforward, wireless transmission of data over the Internet requires some explanation. The wireless device acts like a long serial cable, essentially connecting the classroom to the interface at a site miles away.

In this case, data are collected through seven sensors (temperature, light, flow rate, dissolved oxygen, pH, conductivity, and nitrate ion-selective) connected by 15-foot wires to two ScienceWorkshop(r) 500 interfaces, each powered by one 12-Volt battery. The whole setup is housed with a 1-watt radio in a box next to the creek. An antenna connected to our classroom computer 1.4 miles from the creek then picks up collected data.

The students saved the data and posted it to an Internet server. Meanwhile, at the Emerging Remote Wireless Communications Workshop in Washington, DC, 200 attendees from academia, the communications industry, and the government (including Senator Max Baucus from Montana), monitored the students' actions via a teleconference link between Washington and Montana. Real-time creek data was displayed at their site on the students' web page.

After this experience, I can envision access to a World Wide Web of different science projects, experiments, and data that can be generated locally and published globally. Use of wireless technology can bring Internet access to users currently restricted by geographic location or cost.

Our class was not at the creek last spring, because of the creek restoration project at Brewery Flats. I have one student, John Schmidt, working with the wireless now, collecting environmental data, and we will be back on the stream before the water is put in the new channel this fall.

To see the web site, direct your browser to http://www.lewistown.net/%7Elibrary/Trailhead. For more information on the NSF Wireless Field Tests for Education project, see http://wireless.oldcolo.com/

For additional information about the National Science Foundation wireless project, contact Steve Paulson at or call

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