THERE has been a murder and Agent Trinity, aka Year 5 and 6 students, are putting on their detective hats in order to investigate the crime and find the vicious culprit.
Murder Under the Microscope is an online science investigation program where the students, working as a team, need to solve an 'eco-crime'.
Each day the online scientists from 'Catchment Headquarters', post messages on the MUM site. These messages contain clues which enable the students to eventually identify the villain, victim and crime site where this ecological disaster took place.
The students work as a team to make connections between the clues. This requires 'thinking outside the box' and researching online to locate where crime sites are, what threatened species are in the area and what environmental disasters are taking place. They use the Connective Learning Classroom to engage in online discussion with each other and their teachers by posting questions, sharing new clues and encouraging each other to extend themselves.
Trinity students are competing against thousands of other students across Australia in order to be the first to solve the crime and post their findings online.
In order to prepare for the challenge the students had a visit from an environmental expert, "Professor" Charlie Lucas who took the children to Murrimboola Creek to test the health of the creek. Armed with backpacks containing test tubes and measuring equipment they tested the creek's salinity, turbidity (cloudiness), ph (acidity/alkaline) and temperature. After the extensive testing the students gave the creek a big thumbs up in terms of its overall health.
Charlie then gave the students a very informative talk on our local Murrumbidgee catchment, which gave them a very thorough insight into the factors which determine the health of our river systems in order to maintain biodiversity.