Konstantinos Dimakos, Aristotelis Gkiolmas, Anthimos Chalkidis and Margarita Angelidou

Design and Implementation of an Arduino-based artifact by school students, for the measurement of atmospheric pollutants. Researching the Learning and the Environmental stances’ outcomes.

In the present work, both an educational Environmental project and the simultaneously ongoing educational research are described, where the students of a Vocational Senior High-School created a device in order to measure the
environmental pollutant-particles PM 2.5 and PM 10 (the numbers refer to the diameter). The work revolved around three main axes: (i) the creation and the programming of the “artifact” (the Arduino based device), as a STEM
educational procedure, (ii) the evolving environmental project with the group of students, as a case study, and (iii) – at the same time – an autonomous research measuring the learning outcomes of the whole, together with the – measurable
– changes in the attitudes and stances towards environmental issues. After the completion of the stages of the environmental project and the accumulation of the – indicative – research results, the latter seem encouraging as to the extend in which the action presented here helped the students learn about the environmental problems and change their attitudes towards it.