My Individualized Education Plan for Technology

What a Machine! (And Software)

In the process of completing my Master's of Arts in Teaching program from the University of Alaska Southeast I was asked to challenge myself to improve my technical skills with some type of educational technology to incorporate into my classroom. While there is an incredible array of projects that I could have come with, my decision was pretty much made for me. The Klondike National Park in Skagway, AK received an educational grant about one year ago and with this money they purchased and have loaned 16 Lab Quests made by Vernier to our school. These little hand held data collection systems are absolutely amazing. With the appropriate probes you can take temperature readings, UV radiation readings, analyze motion, track cellular respiration, hook an EKG to someone, test the gas, laws and much more including determine the composition of stars by hooking the spectrometer probe up to a telescope. The Lab Quest tools not only help you record data but it automatically organizes the data into tables and creates graph representing your data.

You may also choose a variety of collection modes and ways to analyze data with individual settings for each mode, such as, Time Based Records, Events with Entry, Selected Events, Photogate Timing, Full Spectrum, or Drop Counting. Moreover, these little guys will determine tangents, statistical information, curve fit graphs, linear fit graphs and examine specific points on a graph. This is not all. The Lab Quest saves files, stores lab procedures, and allows you take observational notes.

With such a daunting amount of skills and applications to learn with this devise, I decided to start with some of the more simple applications and probes for this new hardware and develop lessons for my biology class that would teach them how to use these machines, develop an water quality lab that employs the Lab Quest for data collection, and utilize the accompanying computer software, Logger Pro 3, to analyze and display the results of the collected data.

Individual Goals for this project:
> Become proficient in using the Time Based and Selected Events modes of data collection within Lab Quest.
> Learn how to upload collected data into the Logger Pro software and use Logger Pro to create comparative graphs of collected data.
> Design Lesson plans that incorporate simple water quality analysis and teaches students how to navigate through Lab Quest and some of its basic applications and functions.

At the Beginning:
When I first decided to learn how to use a Lab Quest for my IEP, I had no idea of how versatile this little machine was or what its limitations were. To start I chose the type of data collection I would like to do, gathered the probes I would need, read how to attach the probes and turned on the Lab Quest. By playing around with the machine for just a few minutes I was able to navigate around the home page, found the data table page, the graphing page, and began to see how many types of data collection it was capable of. I quickly learned how to obtain time based recordings but this is not what I needed for my water quality lessons. I wanted to find out how to take different types of measurements for 3 different sample plots at different points in time. I started to explore the "Events with Entry" mode as I thought this may be what I needed to use but soon ran into difficulty.

I created a short video of my beginning trials with Lab Quest. It contains a brief introduction to Lab Quest, setting-up a file, a demonstration of taking temperature readings in the "time based" mode, and a display of the graphed results created within the machine of the 3 readings taken.

After Some Training
The Lab Quest and Logger Pro training seminar I attended in Juneau was very helpful in understanding how this device can be used and what its limitations are. I learned that it was not the "events with entry" mode I should use, but the "selected events" mode and that I needed 3 files, one for each test. As complex as the Lab Quest is, it cannot do everything. Depending on the type of testing you would like to do, some information should still be recorded by hand and the graphing and analyzing capabilities only go so far.

This is where the Logger Pro software comes into the picture. Even though the Lab Quest may not be able to compare different files, by uploading the tests into Logger Pro, or manually entering the data into the software you can create many different comparative graphs and perform statistically analysis of the data. This was probably the most important lesson for me. I was not aware of how to upload and use the Logger Pro software prior to the seminar. As a result, I feel the end results of the labs my students will perform with the Lab Quest will be much more complete and meaningful.

There are 6 lesson plans I created to teach the students how to become familiar with the Lab Quest. The lessons include: How to use the "time based" and "selected events" modes, using the conductivity probe, pH probe, and temperature probe, how to upload and manually enter recorded data into Logger Pro. The lessons are designed to prepare the students for a comparative water quality project for 3 streams/rivers in the Skagway area.

> Picture of Logger Pro Screen displaying the spreadsheet and graphs being created with the Logger Pro software with uploaded data.
> Graphs of sample data for a comparative stream analysis created with Logger Pro and a data table similar to the tables that the students would be expected to create for manually collecting data during the field testing of the streams.

Recap:
Overall, I am very pleased with the results of my individualized educational plan. It helped me get over the initial learning curve in working with Lab Quest hardware and the Logger Pro software. There are many opportunities for integrating this technology into every one of my science class and making it a major component of lessons and science curriculum. I especially like the field collection of data opportunities with the Lab Quest, how it allows you to store notes and observations directly into a created file, how the lab directions for many labs are stored in the devise to be viewed at any time by the user, and the additional analysis capabilities of using the Logger Pro software to compare multiple files of collected data.