our first stream/ what a good day of professional development looks like

Professional Development before school starts is usually a short saison en enfer, but not this year.  Our team got to wander around a creek, play with wireless communication, and actually come up with useful, concrete ideas that didn't go in a 3 ring binder.


Right behind Hixson High is North Chickamauga Creek.  Here is the sampling spot.  At the this point in the stream, the flow is through  Devonian limestone.  The greenish tint of the water along with lots of cedar and walnut trees nearby are good indicators of the "sweet" soil.  However, on Walden's Ridge, where NCC begins, we'll be dealing with very acidic water from coal mining damage, pyritic rock and shales that provide little buffering capacity.

This will be where we do our design tests for the buoy design and wireless capability.  Lots of things for the kids at Hixson to iron out.


After doing the field work, everyone went to the library where we discussed how to work out the live tutorial streams between schools.  Andrew, a young engineer I've been bouncing ideas with, happened to be there.  We commandeered him to join our meeting, and he gave us some good ideas on getting our data up to the Cloud.