Working with teachers and students on scientific research

Kevin Czajkowski
Associate Professor (Geography and the Lake Erie Center)
Department of Geography and Planning
The University of Toledo
Toledo, Ohio USA

Dr. Czajkowski reports on a superb example of students and teachers providing crucial data for validating a major NASA satellite program. He concludes by reflecting on how his involvement with secondary school students has enhanced his role as a university professor. Editor.

MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) is an instrument on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites that monitors the earth below, including clouds, snow and atmospheric aerosols. Recently, a research project involving kindergarten through twelth grade (K-12) students who made snow and cloud measurements to validate the MODIS snow and cloud products appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Remote Sensing of Environment (Ault et al., 2006). Students in the Students and Teachers Exploring Local Landscapes to Interpret the Earth from Space ( SATELLITES) Program that was developed by the University of Toledo and the GLOBE Program participated in snow depth, snow water equivalent, cloud cover and cloud type observations during field campaigns during the winters from 2000-2001 through 2002-2003.

A very unique aspect of this project from a scientific perspective is that involving K-12 teachers and students was the most effective way to gather all of the data necessary to validate the MODIS algorithms. Since the National Weather Service installed ASOS (Automated Surface Observation Systems) there is no longer any systematic snow and cloud observing program in the United States. Although the ASOS measures cloud cover and height, the observations are incomplete and do not include cloud type.

Figure 1. Students from Mrs. Mikell Lynne Hedley's Research Class from Central Catholic High School in Toledo, Ohio, take snow depth and snow water equivalent measurements at the University of Toledo's Stranahan Arboretum.

Once the field campaign for each year was over, MODIS snow product maps were posted on the University of Toledo web site along with the student data for classrooms to use ( http://remotesensing.utoledo.edu/resch/Globe.html). Julia Gehring, a sophomore from Saint Ursula Academy in Toledo, Ohio, with her teacher Jackie Kane, analyzed 50 processed MOD10 snow product images to look for potential errors in the algorithm. They found that the anomalies in the MOD10 snow product imagery typically fell into one of three categories: misclassification of clouds at land-snow boundaries, misclassified snow in otherwise partly cloud-covered land, and freshwater ice classification where a school was located due to misregistration of the MODIS satellite images.

For example, in Fig. 2, the archived weather data and student-collected data indicate a misclassification in the MODIS snow product. Student data indicates no snow was present and the archived weather data reports weekly temperatures far above freezing.

Figure 2. MOD10 snow product for 1 February 2002. The unusual snow streak embedded in a continuous cloud cover The streak passes over two SATELLITES stations that showed 0 mm of snow.

In a corresponding GOES East Image (Fig. 3), an unusual cloud formation coincides directly with the strip of misclassified snow.  

Figure 3. GOES Image from 16:15 Z, 1 February 2002, coinciding with Terra overflight. A cloud formation (center) matches the stripe of misclassified snow cover from the MOD10 snow product image in Figure 2.

Julia and Mrs. Kane were excited to find some unexpected results in their analysis, to be part of a process that involved professional satellite scientists, and to present their findings through a NASA web cast. The SATELLITES program piqued the interest of Mrs. Kane's classes for real scientific research and its application to real problems in remote sensing. Mrs. Kane and her class now look for more opportunities to study remote sensing as she continues to bring the excitement of scientific research to her students. And such enthusiasm for science is what the SATELLITES program is all about.

The SATELLITES Program has continued and now focuses on surface temperature measurements using infrared thermometers to understand how land cover affects the Earth's temperature.

Learning from Teachers and Students: a Scientists Perspective

Working with students on the MODIS snow and cloud validation project has been a positive experience for me as a scientist. Through the process of working with teachers and K-12 students, I have become a much better professor. It is ironic that of all of the education specialist jobs, professor is the only one that does not require any background in teaching. Statements like, “That professor was horrible; don't take him,” are common around university campuses. I heard it when I was a student. Admittedly, I was not a very good instructor when I first started out. The students gave me horrible reviews on the course evaluations.

One of the surprising outcomes of working with teachers is that I learned how to teach better. I have to admit that when I started doing educational outreach, I didn't want anything to do with learning how to teach better. I hired an education specialist, Janet Struble. My job was to be the scientist and present science content, and her job was to take the science and make it usable in the classroom. For the first three years that Janet and I worked together, I ignored the pedagogy sections that she taught during our professional training institutes. Some of it wasn't my fault, since I often was off in another classroom doing a lesson on the computer with teachers or presenting a scientific topic. But, when I had the chance, I did not listen. I specifically did not want to listen, because I felt that by concentrating on teaching techniques, and, oh yes, the dreaded word “pedagogy,” I would become less of a scientist. It was important in my early career to maintain my “scientist” viewpoint. This is not a bad strategy when you are an untenured faculty member hoping for tenure.

Now I know what pedagogy means (I think) and formative evaluation and many other educational terms, including 5 E Learning Cycle, Constructivist Theory, Standards, PBLa, and so forth. You have to learn to speak an entirely new language to know what is going on in the educational world. I have tried to implement the 5 E Model in my teacher training and in all of my courses. I don't do it all of the time. I have also “borrowed” some of the lessons from some of the teachers I have been involved with for my university courses. Hey, if it works for middle or high school students, it should work for college students.

There are many opportunities for scientists to get involved with educational outreach. The first step is to find someone who is providing professional outreach to teachers and then offering your services. There are GLOBE Partnerships and universities that offer the Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA). Colleges of Education offer many professional development opportunities for teachers.

It is relatively easy to get funding for educational outreach for grants of from $50,000 to $100,000. Many agencies give out small grants, including the Department of Education, the EPA and NSF. There are also funds available to each state under the “No Child Left Behind Program.” However, there are more hoops to jump through for outreach grants. The reporting requirements of outreach grants are very involved including evaluation of the effectiveness of the program.

Reference

Ault, T., K. P. Czajkowski, T. Benko, J. Coss, J. Struble, A. Spongberg, M. Templin, and C. Gross, 2006, Validation of the MODIS Snow Product (MOD10) and Cloud Mask Using Student and NWS Cooperative Station Observations, Remote Sensing of Environment, 105, 341-353.