Water on the Web

B. Introduction

What is WOW?

Students Monitoring Minnesota Lakes Through the Internet

Water on the Web (WOW) is a project that allows high school and college students to monitor Minnesota lakes over the Internet. WOW integrates state-of-the-art environmental monitoring with geographic information systems, data visualization, and in-depth educational materials. Our primary goal is to train students to solve real world problems.
Water on the Web is a three-year cooperative educational project funded by the National Science Foundation that began in 1997. After three years, a Water on the Web curriculum will be available which will allow high school, community and technical college students to use state-of-the-art technology to monitor lakes across Minnesota without leaving the comfort of their classrooms.
Water on the Web links University of Minnesota institutions with private industry, community and tribal groups, Minnesota's high schools, community colleges, technical colleges, and natural resource and regulatory agencies. Take a minute to view our staff pages, curriculum writers, national advisory committee and our collaborators web pages.

Water on the Web is:

Special lessons will help students understand the data from several water sampling robots, called Remote Underwater Sampling Station (RUSS) units. Two units have been placed in Ice Lake and Lake Independence in Minnesota. Two more are scheduled for placement in Lake Mille Lacs and the St. Louis River as it empties into Lake Superior. The RUSS units will provide current water conditions from these diverse water bodies through the Internet.
Each unit includes a solar-powered water quality instrument capable of making several measurements at different depths throughout the day. This allows students to investigate a lake’s water quality by designing their own experiments and sampling programs. The students will program the time and depth of measurements into the RUSS units through an on-board cellular telephone linked to their classroom computers through the Internet and special RUSS software. Data will also be made available to the public through the Internet Web site.

What do the RUSS units measure?

These measurements can provide and accurate picture of how a lake or watershed functions and how healthy it is. Additional sensors to measure algae and nutrients are in development.

Why is this project important?

The curriculum will be used to train students in water resources and advanced technology, helping them better manage our natural resources in the future. The RUSS units can help current water managers because they provide continuous, year-round information on the conditions of lakes, something that’s not readily available now. The information will also be useful to anglers, lake associations and shoreland property owners.
Beginning in January 1999 a new study by HCP, the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District (MCWD), the Science Museum of Minnesota, and the WOW team will begin for the purpose of increasing public understanding of monitoring data for better managing water resources. The project will be funded by the US environmental Protection Agency (EPA) EMPACT program and will utilize Lake Independence data and RUSS units at two sites in Lake Minnetonka.
(taken from Water on the Web pages,  http://wow.nrri.umn.edu/wow/overview.html)

Goals of embedding data into the curriculum

The narrated presentation of Water on the Web gives same hints, how data and Data Analysis should be integrated into the project in school. Die Präsentation existiert bei der neuen Version von Water on the Web nicht mehr. Momentan kann sie aber noch in der alten eingesehen werden, die man unter der Adresse: http://wow.nrri.umn.edu/original/ findet.
At first they stress, that the project is based on “real time” environmental data. The students get the data through the Internet and the task of the students is to combine the real time data with ancillary data and watershed information.

(Graph taken from WOW-Presentation (http://wow.nrri.umn.edu/original/powerPt/htmlVsn/sld002.htm))

The curriculum consists of the following topics at the moment:

  1. Aquatic Respiration
  2. Chemistry of Oxygen Solubility
  3. Conductivity
  4. Data Interpretation
  5. Diel Temperature Variation in Lakes
  6. Effect of pH
  7. Effect of Photosynthesis and Respiration on Aquatic Chemistry
  8. Fish Stocking Decisions
  9. Heat Budgets of Lakes
  10. Modeling Water Quality
  11. Properties of Water
  12. Rain Storms, Landuse and Lake Turbidity
  13. Thermal Stratification
Each of these lessons contains components of six different learning domains that the curriculum authors consider as critical to improve scientific and technological literacy: knowledge base, experimental design, data collection, data management and analysis, interpretation of results, and reporting results. We see that all units contain aspects of data analysis and not only Unit 4, which puts data interpretation in the foreground. In the old version of the Water on the Web Curriculum, a relationship between the modules was visualized by means of the following diagram:

(Graph taken from WOW-Presentation (http://wow.nrri.umn.edu/original/powerPt/htmlVsn/sld010.htm))

We see that all steps of a complete analysis of data can become part of the lessons starting from data collection and finishing with the presentation of results. A new curriculum concept is necessary to use "real-time" data. Three ways are suggested to use "real-time" data. But all ways desire are different kinds of data. To examine seasonal or annual variation you need archived data. To investigate current conditions or spontaneous events you need current data. For an ongoing investigation programmed data are required.

(Graph taken from WOW-Presentation (http://wow.nrri.umn.edu/original/powerPt/htmlVsn/sld012.htm))

Structure of the Water on the Web pages

The web site of the project is easily structured so that one can orient oneself without many problems. There are six domains that can be entered from the Water on the Web Homepage.


(http://wow.nrri.umn.edu/wow/index.html)

Users who visit the Water on the Web pages for the first time can find basic information about the project under Overview. Students and teachers who are regularly using Water on the Web can find out under what's new whether changes occurred since their last visit or whether interesting events have occurred in the meantime (for instance, that all lakes have become frozen). All other information for supporting the normal work with the project can be found under the four options: understanding, data, student and teacher.
Under understanding important background information for the topic of the project can be found. Beside the large Glossary, which explains all used terms, you can find site links to informations about the RUSS-Unit, to important facts about the Lakes, as for example: size, location, etc., to the Lake Ecology primer that explains the connections among the physical, biological and chemical components and to the geographic information system (GIS) which gives you the possibility to view interactive maps. The information about the RUSS-Unit contains also explanations of all measured variables. These explanations include the question: "Why is it important?" and a chapter about "reasons for natural variation". The "expected impact of pollution" is also discussed. For some variables some specialties  are explained, like the relation between acid rain and pH.
Student and Teacher contain different versions of the curriculum. Water on the Web has three versions of the curriculum, one for teachers and two different ones for students. For students we can find "studying" lessons and "investigating" lessons. "Studying" lessons allow the students to apply and learn concepts through direct, guided experiences. The "Investigating" lessons provide more opportunities to discover the concepts and involve more problem-solving. The student curriculum only contains the specific activities and numerous work sheets, the teacher curriculum contains further information about intended learning goals, needed time, and in particular so-called teachers' notes, which contain important information about the correct solutions of the various tasks and activities. The structure of the curriculum will be presented in more detail later.
Under data we can find everything that is related to the collected data about the lakes. We can find raw data as well as aggregated and prepared data sets. Moreover, several tools for visualizing data can be found as well. We will now present and discuss the data sets and tools.