VLINDER for schools

The extent of the project makes it impossible to follow a classical approach where scientists install some weather stations. To realize this network scientists invited high schools to participate in this project by searching for suitable locations, building the weather stations and analyzing the resulting data. For students and teachers this project offers a unique opportunity to be part of a large science project.

Students of GO! Atheneum Zelzate install their VLINDER weather station 57 in a small forest in the centre of Zelzate.

Schools play a crucial role throughout the VLINDER project. Firstly, they propose locations that add value to the existing weather observations. Secondly, their students build the weather station and they have the responsibility to monitor the working of their weather station. It is clear that this project would be impossible without the help of schools. The interest of schools to participate in this project was overwhelming. 160 Flemish schools , 1 out of 7 Flemish schools representing 115 000 students, enrolled for the project. Given the budget about 50 schools could eventually participate and teachers of the selected schools have been invited to a VLINDER demo-moment where they got all information about the project and the material to build their weather station. By December 2019 the network became operational.