1. Kids Making Sense
STI-6328
Tim Dye and Alan Chan
AGU Fall Meeting
December 18, 2015

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What Is Kids Making Sense?
Kids Making Sense – An educational program to teach
youth how to measure pollution using air quality
sensors and to interpret the data they collect.

3. • Training materials
– Workbook
– Teacher’s guide
– Labs and experiments
• Sensors
– Particulate matter
– Gases (in progress)
• Website: kidsmakingsense.org
– Data exploration
– Learning more
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What Is Kids Making Sense?

4. 4
AirBeam Sensor
Known Issues
Light sensitivity
Does not work at high
humidity (greater than 90%)
Upper detection limit
(between 300 and 400
mg/m3)
Sensor lifetime and reliability
unknown
Sensor maintenance needs
unknown

5. KMS Pilots/Workshops
• Brooklyn, NY
• San Francisco, CA
• Monterey Park, CA (Los Angeles)
• Taipei, Taiwan
• Sacramento, CA
• Taipei, Taiwan (Teacher training)
• Taichung, Taiwan
• Los Angeles, CA
• Imperial Valley, CA
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6. 6
KMS Sacramento, CA
Luther Burbank High School
• 1-day training
• 3-week deployment
• Individual student projects
• Program evaluation
Funded by Sacramento Metro AQMD

7. Teacher Training in Taipei
• First pilot for trainers and teachers
• Teacher’s guide and labs in development
• Ideas for improvements
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Funded by U.S. EPA and EPA Taiwan

8. 8
Workshop in Taichung

9. 9
Workshop in Taichung
KMS prompts lots of discussion

10. Data Interpretation
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Results from all five teams

11. Data Interpretation
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Averaged results

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Data Interpretation
Students add photos along their paths

13. Next Steps
• Make improvements to app
• Finish teacher’s guide
• Develop labs and additional activities
• Add gas sensing to the program
• Create additional deployments, evaluations,
and improvements
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Contact Info:
Tim Dye
Sonoma Technology, Inc.
tim@sonomatech.com
@sonoma_tech