Feroce+Curriculum+Review+3 

Emma Feroce Air Pollution Curriculum

The Hands-on Activity: I Breathe WHAT?? was developed by Teach Engineering and was contributed to by Integrated Teaching and Learning Program, College of Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder.
 * What organization developed the curriculum module you are evaluating? **

The mission of this activity is to get students to understand the first steps that engineers take to remove contaminants from the air. Students will do so by placing pollution detectors in various areas and then observe what they find in the air. By placing them in familiar places, the students who partake in this activity will grasp a better understanding of what is in the air around them.
 * What is the mission of the organization? **

TeachEngineering is an digital library that contains curriculums for all ages and their mission is to, “ ...establish a national digital library that constitutes an online network of learning environments and resources for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education at all levels”. There are different contributors who continue to fill this online library with activities and curriculum for teachers to do with their students.
 * What is the educational mission and philosophy of the organization? **


 * What does the curriculum module aim to teach? In other words: what are the learning outcomes supposed to be? Do you think the curriculum is appropriately designed to produce the intended learning outcomes? **

The Learning Objectives are identified in the activity as: > > > > I think this curriculum does produce the intended learning outcome, but I also think they could even extend what their learning outcomes are. To me, the main takeaway from this project was not only learning why engineers would do something similar, but getting to learn something very personal. By being able to sample their own air that they breathe everyday is a really important task to feel an impact from this activity. Knowing that this air is directly the air they breathe is a key feature to this activity and one that makes it unique; this feature should be included in their learning outcomes because it was designed properly to meet that goal.
 *  Identify some examples of particulate matter in the air.
 *  Create a particulate matter collector.
 *  Hypothesize why some locations have more particles in the air than other locations.
 *  Describe why engineers count particulate matter while observing air quality.

This curriculum does brush up on some similar objectives that EcoEd Research Group has. They did include to ask the class how they can reduce the pollutants that they find in the air, which would be something along the lines of what EcoEd would do. However, they didn’t include what to do with this once the students answered. This activity could be more effective if after they took note of the pollutants the students were taught how they could have a negative effect on them and why they are there. They could also learn of already existing negative factors that come from this pollution, like asthma, more in depth. Because this activity was only meant to take one-hundred minutes it was more difficult to make this a more well rounded air pollution activity. If they had more time, they should include more applied knowledge of air pollution from the data they got in order to make it similar to EcoEd’s learning outcomes.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Proxima Nova'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">Does this curriculum teach the kind of literacies the EcoEd Research Group advocates? What could be layered into this curriculum so that it address more of the learning outcomes that the EcoEd Group advocates? **


 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Proxima Nova'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">Link for Curriculum: ** [|__https://www.teachengineering.org/view_activity.php?url=collection/cub_/activities/cub_enveng/cub_enveng_lesson07_activity1.xml__]