Internet Tools for Scientific Inquiry

One of the strengths of the River Run Data Visualization Tool is that it provides numerous opportunities for students to discover and explore extremely interesting ecological events, which tend to stand out when the data is graphically displayed. These provocative anomalies are abundant because the river systems from which the data are drawn have experienced numerous highly noteworthy events during the years over which the data are collected. Specifically, the River Run resource provides data and utilities for exploring data on the water quality of the Cape Fear River and the Northeast Cape Fear River from 1995 to 2000. During these years these river systems experienced a major poultry farm spill, several ruptures of hog waste lagoons, five hurricanes, and a 500-year flood. Consequently, when water quality data on the rivers are explored using the data visualization tool, conspicuous spikes in line graphs and flashes of color on the color mapper pop up frequently. These anomalies invite students to stop the animations, form hypotheses, reset parameters, and rerun the animations to test their hypotheses. For example, under the DVT default settings for September 1998, at the NAV site, the effects of Hurricane Bonnie on four water quality parameters can be dramatically seen (Figure 3). The large spike in fecal coliform bacteria can be attributed to the shut down of the City of Wilmington's north side sewage treatment plant when the back-up power generators failed resulting in untreated human sewage being dumped directly into the Cape Fear River. By resetting the parameters, students can easily determine the impact of Hurricane Bonnie on nine additional parameters at the NAV site or any of the other 15 sampling sites.

Figure 3. Effects of Hurricane Bonnie on four water quality parameters.

These findings suggest several hypotheses that could be explored further using the DVT and/or other resources available in middle school classrooms. For instance, why did the dissolved oxygen drop to almost zero shortly after Hurricane Bonnie? Additionally, when conductivity (an indirect measure of the salinity of the water) is graphed, there appears to have been unusually low conductivity after the storm. With the aid of probing and guiding questions from their teacher, students might reasonably predict that the findings shown in the data animations occurred as the result of increase in stream flow at the NAV test site. Runoff from flooded agricultural areas caused increases in turbidity and nutrients including nitrogen compounds and phosphorus. Meanwhile, the tremendous increase in the flow of water from rains associated with the hurricane simply diluted and washed the normally salty water out to sea and thereby decreasing the conductivity.

Interpretations such as those made above could be further tested using the DVT and/or with other appropriate resources (such as newspaper records of floods or animal waste spills). Regardless of the direction students and teachers take when exploring such anomalies, the animated color-coded graphics are an ideal tool for making the data come alive--the graphics leave no doubt about the fact that something interesting happened around the NAV testing station in September of 1998! Additionally the DVT provides a good resource for exploring such anomalies using tools that hold much promise for promoting students' ongoing development of scientific-, computer- and graphic literacy.

The WOW and River Run websites provide the middle school science teacher with two powerful tools for assisting students in constructing meaning from environmental events. Using these utilities the teacher becomes a facilitator of inquiry guiding the students as they select parameters to be observed and noting the changes over time.