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Students from five Catholic Education South Australia (CESA) schools are participating in CESA’s STEM Weather Station Challenge 2019, to learn important coding and STEM skills and gain a broader perspective of climate trends.

The CESA Weather Station Challenge is a pilot program for participating secondary schools, St Barbara’s (Roxby Downs), Caritas College (Port Augusta), St Mark’s (Port Pirie), Mercedes College (Springfield) and Cabra College (Cumberland Park).

The Challenge sees students in Years 7 to 9 given kits containing everything they need to make an  Arduino microcontroller Weather Station, which they have to design, build, code and test, with key learning in coding, algorithms, data acquisition and analysis, and building a product through a design process. They even get to 3D print the weather station. 

Through working in teams, the middle school students will record the local climate conditions at their school for a month, seeking to answer one driving question: Are changing climate conditions important to my local community?

Students will gain perspectives in climate science by collecting, analysing and sharing collected data with other participating schools across the CESA network on an online platform.

“To build our team’s weather station, first we had to assemble and code the Arduino, putting in all the wires, and downloading some code onto it. Then we had to design a housing for the weather station, and actually put it out in the weather and get it to collect data. We put that data into an Excel spreadsheet to create a chart and did an official weather presentation”, explains Isaac, a participating student from St Barbara’s Parish School at Roxby Downs. “I learnt the effect of climate on the community”.

Jarrod Carter is a Learning Technologies Consultant at CESA who developed and oversees the Weather Station program.

Jarrod arranged for a Bureau of Meteorology technician to participate in the project and critique and comment on students’ work. Students and teachers were also given access to Bureau of Meteorology resources on why recording the weather and climate conditions are important ways to understand our world through climate.

“The Weather Station project is designed to promote knowledge sharing among students and teachers”, explains Jarrod. “The project has encouraged students to work together, even though they are from regional or rural schools”.

The use of technology is making the distance between each school seem so much smaller. After a successful Weather Station has been created and data has been collected, teams are asked to analyse their findings through a Weather Report, which is then shared through the Microsoft Teams platform to collaborate data with other participating schools in SA.

Naomi Harris teaches digital design, technology and science at St Barbara’s Roxby Downs. While St Barbara’s may be remote, it has benefited from being able to harness technology to provide students with the same rich digital and STEM learning experiences as metropolitan schools.

Besides extending her own skills, the project deeply engaged students, demonstrating to the entire class the real-world application of technology. “It has shown them coding, wiring circuits, 3D printing and starting to use Excel to look at data,” says Harris.

“The kids enjoy the hands-on stuff and being creative – to touch the wires and make sure they are in the right place. We even got feedback through Microsoft Teams – Jarrod looked at them and showed one of the BOM technicians responding to their designs. They really enjoyed that – and made them feel so included and connected”.

CESA’s Learning and Technologies blog has helped to share the Weather Station project’s progress with other schools not part of the pilot Challenge, so there are now plans to grow the project further through the CESA network in 2020, including a primary school category.