Field study can involve a range of practices for teaching outside the classroom such as place-based inquiry, situated science, and research-led-learning. Field study engages students in the "real world" through inviting them to apply their prior knowledge to new circumstances, producing their own new knowledge to fill in the gaps in their understanding, as well as social learning about how their work impacts others.

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Field Study Kits

This is a collection of kits from across Public Lab's ecosystem which may be particularly suited for use in field studies educational contexts.

Kite and Balloon Mapping Kits

• https://publiclab.org/balloon-mapping

A simple DIY kit to take aerial photographs of things that are important to you - from hundreds of feet up. Hundreds of people around the world have used the Balloon Mapping Kit and its many variations for all kinds of projects over the past seven years.

Lego Spectrometer Kit

• https://publiclab.org/lego

The new Lego Spectrometer Kit addresses issues of rigidity, sourcing, modularity, and image quality over previous versions of our Do-It-Yourself spectrometers, which we’ve been collaboratively refining since 2011. This latest version enables analysis of liquid or solid samples and the LEGO components allow a resolution of 2 nanometers.

Basic Microscope Kit

• https://publiclab.org/basic-microscope

The Basic Microscope Kit is an introductory Do-It-Yourself microscope made from affordable and easy to find parts. The goals of the project are to offer a very easy starting point for DIY microscop, to act as a stepping-stone to more advanced DIY microscopes, and to be good enough to view the 2.5 micron particles commonly measured in ambient air pollution.

Nano Data Logger / Mini Pearl Logger Kit

• https://publiclab.org/nano-data-logger

The Nano Data Logger is an easy and very inexpensive way to start collecting environmental data, based on the open source Arduino platform and easily integrating with the online p5.js data visualization framework.

Multispectral Raspberry Pi camera

• https://publiclab.org/raspberry-pi-infragram

Recently launched to the International Space Station, this multispectral camera based around the Raspberry Pi enables the kind of photography NASA uses to do plant health analysis. It is supported in part by the AREN project at NASA and was developed in collaboration with FarmHack, a network of organic farmers using open source technology.

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Questions

Activities

below image via The Economist, December 2017, fair use permitted