SMART’s Project Rain Gauge promotes environmental awareness in public high school
by Mary Aileen Carreon
“I want to be more environmentally aware and responsible and rainfall is one important environmental phenomenon that we should be concerned about.”
This personal goal, which got science teacher Marinella Garcia-Sy interested in Project Rain Gauge, is something she now shares with her peers and students at the San Miguel National High School.
San Miguel NHS, a mother school of the DepEd-Division of Bulacan, is one of the first schools to support Project Rain Gauge during its launch in August 2007. As the school’s representative, Garcia-Sy took on the task of rallying the entire school behind the cause.
Project Rain Gauge, an initiative of Smart Communications, Inc. (SMART) under its Smart Schools Program (SSP), aims to create a network of ground stations across the country to provide supplementary data on local rainfall measurement in specific areas. Project partners include the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), the KLIMA Climate Change Center, Manila Observatory, and the Department of Education.
To date, there are 50 Smart Schools participating in the collaborative effort to monitor rainfall in their respective communities with the use of rain gauges provided by SMART that they maintain inside their campuses.
“With the help of my students, I have been implementing Project Rain Gauge since I underwent training on rainfall monitoring during a workshop hosted by SMART,” says Garcia-Sy, a Secondary Science Teacher 1.
She grouped her students into seven with a different group assigned every week. Each member is assigned one day to monitor rainfall using a manual rain gauge. The group leader submits the rain gauge journal with the week’s rainfall reading. After verification of the entries, an assigned student then uploads the rainfall data to the Project Rain Gauge website. At the end of the school year, the groups are required to submit a consolidated report of all the rain gauge readings they have recorded.
The previous two batches of fourth year section 1 students took part in the exercise. But for this school year, Garcia-Sy assigned sophomores from the Science Class to do the rainfall observation and data recording, this time from both the manual rain gauge and the digital rain gauge donated by SMART and recently installed in their school.
“I realized that it doesn’t matter what year level you assign. As long as you instill environmental concern and awareness among the students, they will want to get involved,” says Garcia-Sy.
Second year Lyrra Magtalas considers it a privilege to take part in the rainfall monitoring and believes that “the records are treasures.” Classmate Imee Macaranas is especially thrilled that they get to compare their rainfall reading with the weather forecast from PAGASA.
“They record the day’s overall weather condition gathered from different sources such as the television, radio, Internet, and newspaper in their journal alongside with the rainfall data obtained from the rain gauges. This way, they can observe the locality’s weather condition compared with the national’s as reported from different sources,” explains Garcia-Sy.
In congruence with Project Rain Gauge, she also asks her students to make a diary during weekends on how they are implementing the Low Carbon Diet, an environmental awareness initiative of the Ateneo De Manila University which Garcia-Sy learned about during a Project Rain Gauge workshop. It focuses on recycling, energy conservation and responsible use of resources. The exercise is supposed to motivate the students to become even more environmentally conscious and responsible.
“Little by little, the school community realizes the importance of observing and monitoring the weather as an important indicator of how things are going to be for the next 24 hours. For the students, at a young age, they are learning how to be conscious and responsible for their surroundings, realizing man’s role as a caretaker of his domain,” she notes.
‘The Mayumo’, the school’s semi-annual paper, has been featuring Project Rain Gauge, making the undertaking known to the school’s 6,000 students and 200 teachers.
“The school’s Science Club also participates in the project by collaborating with us like during Project Rain Gauge’s 3rd Convention,” shares Garcia-Sy.
The two-day convention was a gathering of representatives of Smart Schools that are part of the project. Science teachers from schools nationwide visited San Miguel NHS, selected as pilot school in the use of a digital rain gauge to complement the existing manual rain gauge. Guest speaker Vicente C. Manalo III, weather specialist at the Farm Weather Services Section of PAGASA, gave a lecture and demonstration on the proper installation, use and maintenance of the digital rain gauge.
The deployment of digital rain gauges is among the recent developments in Project Rain Gauge which include an SMS-based reporting system made possible via a mobile application developed by the Ateneo Java Wireless Competency Center.
Also unveiled during the convention was the new project website www.projectraingauge.ph. Developed and managed by SMART, it includes a rainfall data page where the school reports submitted via SMS or online are automatically consolidated in charts and graphs.
Like her fellow ‘rain gaugers’, Garcia-Sy is excited over these improvements. “The SMS-based reporting will prove to be convenient, especially when there is no Internet available. The new website, I find more personalized and tailor-made for the Project Rain Gauge community.”
Together with the latest enhancements is an effort to integrate Project Rain Gauge in the science curriculum. During the convention, Dr. Susan R. Espinueva, assistant weather services chief of the Hydro Metrological Division of PAGASA, conducted a workshop for the teachers to guide them on how to develop a lesson plan based on rainfall-related topics.
In accordance with the project’s long-term goal, Garcia-Sy’s grand vision includes a plan to correlate the rainfall data collected by their school with the flooding data of San Miguel River. She also looks forward to a possible consortium with the local government through the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC).
“The potential of Project Rain Gauge is great and we are definitely taking it to a higher level. We started it out as an exercise in science learning. In the future it can become a vital source of information that may be utilized by science agencies like PAGASA as a potential community-based early warning system,” reveals Darwin Flores, Public Affairs Community Partnerships senior manager of SMART.
This piece of news impassions Garcia-Sy all the more.
“San Miguel, the northernmost town of Bulacan, is a calamity-prone area. We have local residents and school children wading in muddy waters during the rainy season. This perennial problem can be best remedied through a preventive measure. Our school through Project Rain Gauge would only be too willing to contribute to the improvement of disaster-preparedness in our locality.”
This article was also featured in Philippine Star.
(Published 28 September 2009, Smart Communications Inc.)
