Grant to allow students to study weather with radio

Meg Millard's fifth graders at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School will be supplementing their science textbooks next year with a 50-foot radio tower and an on-site weather station.

Millard was one of 50 teachers nationwide to win a $10,000 Toyota TAPESTRY grant for her proposal, titled, "Using Amateur Radio to Learn about World Wide Weather."

"We're trying to bring the world and the community as much into the classroom as possible," said fifth-grade teacher Pam Webb, who will work with Millard.

Millard and several others from the school will travel to Dallas during Spring Break to present the project at the National Science Teachers Association's national convention.

She said she is excited about her project because it will allow the children to participate in real-life situations and hands-on projects.

"If you get them involved in the community, then all of the stuff they do makes sense and they are more interested," she said. "We try to do projects where they apply their knowledge and skill."

In the project, fifth graders will use data about weather patterns that they gather from their scientific instruments to try to predict the weather.

Millard said her idea and enthusiasm for radio just happened to coincide with the fifth-grade science curriculum's focus on weather and technological design.

"I always wanted to do something with amateur radio," she said.

Using basic ham radio licenses, the students will talk to other amateur radio operators to report their findings locally and all across the world, Millard said.

Students will have call numbers that identify them by location so that they can communicate with amateurs on the same frequency -- connected by radio towers dotting the globe.

Millard said she also hopes to draw on connections with people in other countries so that bilingual students can translate for the rest of the class. This will give them the opportunity to become experts in their first language.

Although her proposal was accepted on the first try, some teachers have had to apply seven or eight times before receiving a grant, Millard said.

The grant money will arrive by the end of March, Millard said, so she can order the equipment and have the tower constructed during the summer.

Her goal is to have students working with teachers in the fall and to have their radio licenses by the winter or spring of next year.

When asked what they hope to learn from the project, Millard's fifth-grade students gave a wide variety of responses.

One student hopes to intercept military messages, another wants to use the basic battery and electrical skills he will gain to construct a mechanical translator, and many want to talk to people in China.

Webb said she hopes the project increases their interaction with people outside their basic communities.

"They're hopefully going to be continuing members of the world," she said.

Millard said she also hopes the focus on weather can help students who have trouble selecting the right clothes to wear to school.

The teachers are in the process of applying for a second grant this spring that will focus on the wetlands in the surrounding area.

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.