Give a scientist a sensor…
(a reflection on hosting a pro-d event)
I recently hosted my first ever professional development event. Usually, at the local level, there aren’t many opportunities for science types. There just aren’t enough of us and we specialize so there isn’t much common talk beyond ‘how can we get the students to love and learn science more?’. That is why I went out of comfort zone to host an event on sensors. I’m still not an expert on my physics equipment from PASCO let along the sensors for the other branches but I thought it was worth the shot.
How do I do a pro-d event that engages the audience? How could I hook the teachers in attendance? The answer was easy. Not for me to stand there and talk at them. No! They needed to do science! They needed to use the sensors. So, that’s what we did.
I set up several stations in my room. One for physics, one for bio, one for chem and outside for earth science. Each station required the use of an appropriate sensor (motion, CO2, pH and weather) and a task. I gave them as little instruction as possible beyond how to use SPARKVue. I wanted them to experience what their students would.
I expected only my department to show up. That is still 13 people. I had middle school and elementary teachers show up as well. How would they do? The hours flew by. I didn’t need to worry about filling the time; we needed more. There was a buzz that you don’t hear at staff meetings. They were engaged. They were loving it. They were hooked on sensors.
What I loved most was the talk on how they could use it for their classes. I wanted to get their ideas because they would know better than I. Every teacher left with an idea on how the sensors could be used…if only we had more.
When the day was over I was asked to host more of these. It was very easy to say yes.
The Augustana Campus chemistry labs have traditionally been perfectly acceptable, but have yielded somewhat standard chemistry experiments with very typical analysis. As a satellite campus of the University of Alberta, located in Camrose, Alberta, we have strived to be almost an extension of our North Campus sibling, which has proved problematic within the constraints of a 100 kilometers distance. Recently, things have changed. Last summer, we diverged from this straightforward and customary path and decided to do something slightly different. Along with our newly renovated labs—that encourage thought and collaboration—we have fundamentally changed our first-year chemistry lab experiments, which mean that different analyzation techniques are needed. Gone are vitamin C titrations with Tang and tablets, replaced by extraction techniques and spectral analysis. Hand-held spectroscopes have been replaced with a fiber optic cable in a light emissions lab while also adding a light measurement for chemiluminescence.
Our previous vitamin C laboratory experiment was based in a traditional vein, where titrations were used to determine the vitamin C content in both Tang (a powdered orange drink very few students today have ever experienced) and 500mg vitamin C tablets. Being a “traditional” lab exercise meant that most students likely had seen this done in high school or had done this very titration themselves. Our goal was to create an experience where the students learn a new analytical technique by extracting vitamin C from a pepper, then determining the vitamin C concentration from a standard calibration curve on a 
Light emissions lab experiments can be tedious at best. You need to constantly be looking through a hand-held spectroscope, which is exactly what we were asking our students to do. Also, we were looking at lights, flame tests and emission tubes with said spectroscopes. Throughout all of this, we weren’t asking the students to really do anything else, chemically speaking. Chemiluminescence and chromatography columns were two things we decided to add into our updated labs, along with the fiber optic cable accessory for the Wireless Spectrometers (as well as scaling back the spectroscope use). In the first part of our experiment, students would activate a glow stick and add the content to our 3D printed Light Calorimeter, then read the light emitted using the 
By using this method, we wanted students to learn not only about columns and their ability to separate mixtures but also to get comfortable learning how to collect data using a sensor and a data logger (in this case an iPad). In the second part of our experiment, we still use traditional light emission tubes (Argon, Helium, etc.) where we use spectroscopes to obtain the emission spectrum lines. For the hydrogen tube, however, we set up the 
Since the wireless sensors are easily incorporated into our lab designs, we have set our sights on adding the brand new 
We also have a unique 
