On Thursday, September 27th, employees of the Montana State University Science Math Resource Center attended Chief Joseph Middle School Outdoor Days at Gallatin County Regional Park. They set up an activity station and information table for six classes of sixth grade students. The students participated in three hands-on, citizen science activities. Part of outreach for the Montana EPSCoR Track 1 project SMART FIRES, students measured air quality with the Atmotube Pro Air Quality Monitor and the Temtop m2000 Air Quality Monitor and played a game simulating the effect of particulate matter on the lungs. The air quality activities helped the students process questions of what causes lower air quality and how low air quality impacts human health, bringing in multiple aspects of the SMART FIRES project from smoke science to social science. The science day also allowed SMRC team members to understand how middle schoolers engage with air quality data. This helped to evaluate whether a state wide citizen science project focused around air quality monitoring in Montana schools would be effective outreach.
The air quality activities were combined with an activity catching and identifying insects to encourage students to further engage in their environments as citizen scientists. Insects were collected using a variety of tools and identified with the mobile app Seek by iNaturalist. The Science Math Resource Center completed these activities by working with the NASA AEROKATS and ROVER Education Network as well as EPSCoR’s SMART FIRES project as both focus on involving the community in scientific sensing.
