The Konza Schoolyard LTER program specifically targets fourth, fifth and sixth graders, middle school, and high school sophomores and juniors. NSF's goal was to give teachers and students access to the LTER sites, which are outdoor laboratories dedicated to the study of major ecosystems, said Konza Environmental Educator and naturalist Valerie Wright, who directs the Schoolyard LTER program. Having students collect data at a biological field station is unique to the Konza Schoolyard LTER program, said Wright. The student projects on Konza parallel the long-term research projects being done by Konza Prairie ecologists. There are more than 100 active research projects at Konza now, Wright added.
Teachers tie the activities to their classroom as a regular part of the curriculum.
After research at Konza, students add their data to specially designed databases connected to Konza's Web site. The data of all the participating classes can be accessed for a variety of classroom science and math lessons. Over time, students, just like their researcher counterparts, will start to see patterns of change on the prairie emerge from the accumulating data. When this phase of the program is in place, both the student-created databases and streamlined versions of actual scientific databases compiled by Konza Prairie Biological Station scientists will become available via the Internet for classroom use by students everywhere. The data collected in April 2001 by Eugene Field Elementary School students will become the basis of comparison for all future classroom studies of the watersheds.