Lane Tech Computer Science teacher Jeff Solin was on Capitol Hill last week representing the community partnership between the Array of Things project and Lane Tech. Along with the Charlie Catlett, the director of the AoT, Jeff presented to and on behalf of the director of the NSF to various members of congress. The goal of the event was to showcase projects that exemplify the benefits of the science they fund, in particular for AoT, the benefits for people living in cities. Array of Things, a partnership between the University of Chicago, the City of Chicago, and Argonne National Laboratory, is harnessing new technologies to provide air quality and environmental measurements at a neighborhood level. Data from sensors will be published openly through the City of Chicago’s interactive data portal for residents, and will also be made available for free through programming interfaces to allow anyone to create new applications. One of the first applications is “Turning Sky,” created by Luftwerk using LED lighting on a major bridge to visually indicate air quality for bikers and pedestrians on Chicago's popular Bloomingdale Trail. Lane Tech High School works with Array of Things scientists to teach students how to design and use sensor systems to gather data and analyze that data to answer science questions. Over 300 students have taken or are currently taking the course so far. Lane Tech is currently in it's second iteration of the curriculum which was designed by the AoT team and Lane Tech Computer Science teachers Jeff Solin and Daniel Law.
NSF's Arc of Science Media Announcement:
