Ashdown High School teachers create Solar Eclipse Data Logger
ASHDOWN, Ark. — Two Ashdown High School teachers attended a training workshop and came out as creators of a device that will log data on the solar eclipse.
Jeanne Burden, an algebra and programming teacher, and biology Jennifer Simmons attended the workshop in mid-february. The event was hosted by the Arkansas Department of Education, University of Central Arkansas and science specialists as part of a statewide solar eclipse data collection project.
Burden said the workshop allowed science and computer science teachers to collaborate on something exciting and timely.
“This will be a rare experience in the lives of our students, and it will allow for teachable moments in the classroom,” Burden said of the April 8 eclipse.
Burden and Simmons said the process for creating their data collection board was intimidating at first because of their limited experience with coding.
“Thankfully, the professional development was delivered in layers over the course of two days, which made it very accessible for both of us despite our limited experience with what we were doing,” Burden said.
The two teachers started the process with a Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller that can hold one file at a time. They then attached it to a solderless breadboard, which allowed them to begin building and programming the remaining parts of the logger.
“We first wired a circuit to power our LED. We then programmed our Pico to ensure we could illuminate our LED. Next we wired another circuit to integrate a button into our board,” Burden said. “Once the button was attached, we wrote a program to test the functionality of the button.”
The button and LED test was successful, which allowed Burden and Simmons to wire in the custom censor board that UCA had created.
“The board contains the temperature and luminosity sensors we need to be able to collect the data,” Burden said. “We added wires to connect this board to the Pico and wrote the program to check that our sensors were working correctly.”
Burden and Simmons said they were a bit anxious to work with the electrified board and were concerned about damaging it or the microcontroller.
“The culmination of our two-day learning journey was taking the board outside and simulating a data collection experience similar to the one we will have on the day of the solar eclipse,” Burden said.
Burden and Simmons will use the board to record temperature and luminosity from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the day of the eclipse. They will submit the data to the state, as well as extract information for use in the classroom.