• Create: The school or university builds the monitoring station(s) using our low-cost, open source DIY-build designs, in Computing and Technology classes

• Use: The stations are used for in class demonstration and to support field-trips, fieldwork and independent investigations (coursework and dissertation) by providing additional data collection capacity and training in environmental monitoring

• Collect: The school or university  installs and maintains some of the station(s) on a flat roof or other suitable space within the grounds to collect data on weather, climate, air quality and anything else of relevance to the site.  The station writes data  to freestation.org where it is accessible to all alongside a suite of online tools for in -class demonstration and analysis.

• Learn: In Geography and Environmental Science classes, the school uses the data from their station(s) or data  from other EduStations around the world

• Network: A station in even 1% of schools would be an unparalleled  network of environmental monitors.  This would help to counteract the global decline in ground based monitoring networks that is occurring at exactly the time we need them the most.  Such a network would also cover the (largely urban) areas that host the majority of the world's human population and thus monitor the conditions in which the majority of us live in a way they are just not monitored currently

• Longevity: With successive classes maintaining and rebuilding the monitors over time this network can also be one with longevity beyond an individual project

Do you want to build stations or use data from the existing FreeStation network. To use existing data skip straight to  FreeStation data for education. If you do want to build, consider the following:

• What are your sensor requirements i.e. what do you want to measure?

• Will the sensor be located indoors or outdoors (i.e. will a weather shield and solar power be needed)

• How will data be read from the station:

  • direct connection via GSM or WIFI (FreeStationLive) or 

  • read by tethering to mobile phone or Freelay  (FreeStationLocal) 

  • or swap of SDCARD

• Go through the documentation and training materials so that you: 

  • find the right FreeStation for your needs

  • avoid ordering incorrect or insufficient components

  • avoid mistakes in construction

Building your first FreeStation will be time consuming and error prone.  After the first, others will be easy.

Our EduStation classroom demo datalogger is the cheapest and easiest build for  classroom teaching.  It has no enclosure and is for indoor (classroom) use only

Our FreeStation fieldwork project ideas document  provides ideas for how FreeStations can be built and deployed to answer >100 research questions for dissertations, field course projects, fieldwork investigations and non-examined assessments (NEAs).

These lesson inserts provide GCSE or A-level curriculum references, a learning objective and teacher and student instructions for using FreeStation equipment or data for topics in Mathematics

These lesson inserts provide GCSE or A-level curriculum references, a learning objective and teacher and student instructions for using FreeStation equipment or data for topics in Physics

Existing FreeStation data can be accessed for educational use directly from the FreeStation database links below and our less plans above or via our EduStation clusters, which are our station clusters most suited to educational use, which can be visualised and analysed through our EduStation dashboard.  Key EduStation clusters are linked below.  Guidance is provided with the dashboard :

• Climate resilient schools cluster (London, UK) - weather stations for climate resilience throughout London.

• ReSET Bologna cluster - urban heat stations in Bologna.