The ask of schools: We require teachers & pupils to spare 30-40 minutes in the Summer Term to attend a workshop.
What it is: SAMHE will help us better understand schools’ indoor air quality and involves scientists from 6 institutions from across the UK. Initial funding for the SAMHE project was provided by the Department for Education, which continues
to be involved. Funding for the main project is provided by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council). SAMHE is important because, as you will know, poor air quality can have impacts on pupils’ concentration levels and their health.
What you will get: Interested schools will receive a free monitor that measures air pollution, and pupils and teachers will be encouraged to do their own experiments to see how air quality differs in different rooms, with different ventilation
levels, numbers of people, different activities, or whatever they want! The monitors will monitor carbon dioxide (CO2), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and particulate matter (PM) along with temperature and relative humidity. These monitors will be slightly
different from those you may have had from other projects because they are designed to upload data automatically to our web-based app and pupils will be able to access that information to see how air quality changes over the course of hours, days, weeks, months
and seasons. This will create opportunities for pupils to be scientists and do hands-on experiments with their monitors. The data will also be automatically recorded and used by our project scientists to understand school air quality across the UK.
How you can help: We know how busy schools are, which is why we want to make the project as useful for you as possible. We are reaching out to select schools to see if you would be interested in taking part in sessions relating to the design
of the web interface and suggested educational activities to make sure they meet your needs and are fun and engaging for pupils. There are several ways for you to get involved with this: through sending a teacher or building manager along to one or more 30-40
minute discussions (online) with other school representatives, or through a class or science club having a discussion with our researchers (online), again this would ideally take around 30 minutes but we can adapt to fit your needs. The discussions will cover
what the app could look like, and what sort of support you would need to participate.
When you can help: In the Summer Term, we are offering several alternative dates for an initial session (online) with teachers as representatives of their schools, during which we will be giving a bit more background information on the project
and will be asking questions about project logistics. The dates for these sessions will meet your avialability and we will be happy to try to accommodate you. Further dates for teacher sessions will be arranged in due course.
Contact: Chris Brown:
C.J.Brown@leeds.ac.uk