Unidata/COMET

Team Members: Jeff Weber - Unidata, Tom Baltzer - Unidata, Wendy Abshire - COMET, Eric Pyle - James Madison University, and Owowumi Alabi - University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Meeting Room:

Pre-meeting Sharing Space

Please introduce yourself to your team members. Give a brief description of your role in facilitating the use of data in education. You can also post links, files, or images.

Add Pre-Meeting Notes here:

We're thinking about doing a real time weather module and including COMET media for educational purposes.

Introduction Area:

Hi. I'm Wendy Abshire. I have an MS and BS in atmospheric science. I first began working at UCAR in 1983 as a student assistant and specializing in convection and radar meteorology. After my MS at Wyoming I began working for the COMET Program in UCAR in 1990. Most of my roles have been related to working as part of team to create interactive education and training materials on weather and other earth science topics. All our web-based training is available to the world for free through the MetEd website at http://www.meted.ucar.edu. I will be contributing my knowledge of these 500 hours of materials toward our teams' efforts to create an interesting and sound product.

I'm Tom Baltzer. I have a BS in computer science and 20 years of software engineering experience primarily in scientific applications. I've worked at UCAR in the Unidata program center for 4 years on a project called Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) - see our web site at http://www.leadproject.org. LEAD is working to bring atmospheric data and tools together in a way that can be used by students and researchers to dynamically and adaptively work with the weather. Unidata provides a 6 month archive of atmospheric data to the LEAD project and our community. A THREDDS data server has been set up with these data and is available at http://lead.unidata.ucar.edu:8080/thredds/catalog.html. Here are three datasheets for your perusal. They need a lot of work and you are welcome to have at it!

Atmospheric Model Datasheet (Microsoft Word 99kB May9 08)
NEXRAD Radar Datasheet (Microsoft Word 101kB May9 08)
NESDIS GOES Datasheet (Microsoft Word 97kB May9 08)
METAR Datasheet (Microsoft Word 96kB May9 08)

Hi. I'm Wumi Alabi. I have a MS and BS in Physics. I am presently enrolled in an interdisciplinary PhD Program (with triple majors in Geosciences, Physics and Curriculum & Instruction) at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). I have been a science educator for about 19 years. After my BS in 1986, I taught high school Physics for about a decade before I joined the African Regional Center for Space Science and Technology Education (located in Nigeria) as coordinator of the science outreach department. My research activities include monitoring tropical convective cloud systems with satellite data. I currently teach the Introductory Environmental Science Laboratory at UMKC. We are in the process of reinventing the Lab to incorporate guided-inquiry based activities to enhance student learning. The goal is to integrate new interactive modules characterized by data-rich educational activities. This is why I am so excited about our teams' project to develop a real-time weather module!

Hi, my name is Eric J. Pyle. I am currently in a rather unique position at James Madison University, where I serve as a geoscience education specialist, bringing content- and pedagogical content knowledge to prospective and inservice Earth science teachers. The linkage to teachers that I have is one that I have valued and believe to be valued. I am a former high school Earth science teacher, and have served as the President of the West Virginia Science Teachers Association (WVSTA), and am presently the President-Elect of the Virginia Association of Science Teachers (VAST). Much of my work focuses on the design, evaluation, and philosophical characterizations of instructional materials in the geosciences, primarily at the grades 6-14 levels. I also have worked with analyzing and developing geoscience visualizations. I currently teach courses in the History & Philosophy of the Geosciences, Planetary Geology, and Meteorology for Teachers, among others. I received my BS in Earth Science/Geology from UNC-Charlotte in 1983, my MS in Geology from Emory University in 1986, and a PhD in Science Education from the University of Georgia in 1995. I am very interested in working as a member of this team, as I have been working with an open-source planetarium program called Celestia, and am very interested in adapting contemporary visual data sources to this medium.

Session 1 - Thursday Morning
Meet your team members. Learn about the data, tools, and expertise represented on your team. Review DataSheet(s) and explore data and tools.

Team members meet each other and share their experiences and viewpoints on using data in education. Review and discuss DataSheet(s) begun by the data representative(s) for your team. Explore datasets and tools and consider how the expertise on the team can complement them. If you haven't already done so, narrow down the range of datasets the team is considering using to a manageable number.

Add Session 1 Notes here:

Jeff suggests that we can take COMET modules as a source for information from which we devise IDV bundles around real weather data.

Wendy suggests that there is a Meteo 101 module designed for transportation road managers. Upon seeing this morning's talk, she's thinking that road overlays with current weather data and the COMET module folks can determine wether or not they can travel on a particular road today.

Eric likes the notion that giving a personal touch to the chapter will draw in the audience. Help teachers and kids to make decisions about weather. "Will Grandma get to my birthday party".

Road conditions can be a key part of it and the COMET module has good road info. Web cams could play into this nicely. IDV has a current set of web cams and we are limited to that. However, if we find a web cam that we'd like to add we can contact the support team at Unidata to add a web cam. Horizon is a feature that we'd be looking for, however we should include in the module how to add web cams to the IDV. An important aspect of getting from A to B is the third dimension - the crow flies perspective is not adequate to anwer the question "Will Grandma Make it to my party?"

While we had defined our target audience to be undergraduate non-science majors, Eric strongly encourages that we encompass high school learners as well.

The module focus is real time weather for today and tomorrow.
1) "Where are you and where do you want to be"?
2) What data sources will you need to look at for answering how the weather will impact you.
3) What does it mean? I.e. I'm looking at this data, but I don't know what that red dot means!

Data Latency: Two PhD meteorologists are looking at the weather channel - looking at a radar loop - can we walk to the restaurant. Their Admin looked out the window and concluded that they were deluded!

Let's not let this one die on the vine. The feeling is that Eric as the Curriculum developer should drive the chapter development. What focus or foci does he feel confident that he can make a complete module for.

*) How will my outdoor activity be affected by weather this weekend?
- Travel
- Local activities, will they happen? Might they end early?
- Preparation

Session 2 - Thursday Afternoon
Brainstorm data-use storylines

Brainstorm a set of possible storylines for valid investigations of the dataset(s) you have selected. Come up with at least one compelling scenario that will give users a reason to work through the technological steps necessary to perform an analysis of the data.

The Activity Outline Guide (Microsoft Word 42kB Apr9 08) provides an outline for the minimum information needed for the team's activity outline.

Add Session 2 Notes here:

Learning Cycle/Lesson Plan approach

5 E model: engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration and evaluation

Concept - start very local - weather in my back yard today and expand spatially and temporally. Following this model we engage with your weather locally. With exploration we expand out to a regional look. Explanation goes to the Spring Break. Need to make it interesting even for benign weather as well as exciting weather. Will I need suscreen, extra water, etc. Important point - we're talking Qualitative analysis not Quantitative analysis.

Engagement

Story - "You look out the window and it's sunny and warm, so shorts and T-shirt donned - you're out the door. Later that morning the front moves in and you're freezing. Wouldn't it have been great to know that weather was coming?"

Concept - Caught off guard by the weather

Data: NAM 40 - subset to my home and Observational data (METARS over adde), satellite, radar and webcam and of course don't forget to look out your window.

Station Model: Cut and paste content from the COMET module to describe the station model - some urls from Wendy:
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/maps/sfcobs/wx.rxml

http://profhorn.meteor.wisc.edu/wxwise/AckermanKnox/chap1/information_on_the_station_model.html

Jeff will make bundles available available through Ramadda - go to URL: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/repository and click on Weather data and then on EET Bundles. Here you will find all the bundles that Jeff is generating for the EET. When you get to the bundle of interest (they will be named .xidv) select the bundle of interest and then click on the 'View in IDV' menu item.

Exploration

is in their language.

Story - "This morning was nice and warm, but then this afternoon the wind picked up and changed direction and it got colder" - say you've got a special someone visiting you

Concept - Regional weather is the key to how your weather changes - position is everything Don't forget to work in X, Y AND Z

Data: NAM 40 - depends on how large a region we're talking about - Same obs

Explanation

is putting it into the scientific language. "Change in wind direction, cold air moves in, this is the passage of a cold front"

Concept - Upstream and downstream of the Jet - I'm going to disneyland next week - what clothing should I have? - extra credit how turbulent will my flight be?

Data: Use comet modules, external data sources - e.g. NOAA for watches and warnings.

Notes to teacher - depending on the level of the class increase or decrease the choices of information. Could be the teacher just drives the entire experience - my grandma coming from point A to point B - what do I need to tell her - all the way to Your grandma is coming what do you want to explore to be able to tell her.

Elaboration

go back to student and taking what you've learned from a given situation and put it into a new context.

National to global scale - 3 D visualization of the jet stream using an isosurface.

Data: GFS


Evaluation -

students put it out where others see it - e.g. poster

This could be ZIDV files that include the data and visualization that the student has put together. Could be on any of the levels

Sessions 3 and 4 - Friday Morning
Select a data-use scenario and perform a proof-of-concept check

Use the complementary expertise on the team to check that the task you are envisioning can actually be completed in an educational setting. Identify a target grade level for the activity and choose a working title.

Please limit the scope of the activity to tasks that can be accomplished by accessing existing data and tools. Discuss and agree upon the content limits of the activity as well. Consider that the major goal of these activities is to develop user familiarity with the data and tools.

Add Session 3 and 4 Notes here:

Today we're looking at the idea of generating ~6 "near real-time" regional IDV bundles as a starting point for the students/instructors. Each bundle will include a probe of several meteorological parameters of interest. This gives the students a starting point for looking at the weather "in my back yard". Part of the instructional exercise will be to allow the student to take the data probe from it's location (center of the region of interest) and move it to "my back yard". The student can then save that bundle and since the reference will be "latest" data and will now probe over their location,

As a team we're devising the elements of our bundle "template" - Hi res US map, counties, cities, highways, Temperature color filled, precip color filled, winds as streamlines

As we're putting together the first bundle (SW region) using the NAM 12km. Upon loading just two parameters we're seeing the IDV using about 1/2 Gig of RAM - this is too demanding for our target audience. Begin again using the 40km NAM. The thought is that there could be a future module that builds off this one taking the student to the next level - i.e. now I'd like to look at a finer resolution so I'll go to motherlode, access the 12km data and make my region smaller.

- Further work on this arrives us at the conclusion that multiple bundles will be a better overall experience. There will be 6 regional bundles for forecast data and then a nexradcomp and a satellite

Action items:

Jeff - build bundles for 6 regions over the CONUS and 1 each for Alaska and HI and if he's feeling ambitious PR plus nexradcomp bundle and satellite bundle

Tom - Update the data sheets to reference the motherlode archive and clarify that the LEAD archive has 6 months of data available.

Wendy - description of METAR that is visually pleasing and complete. [Done]

Sessions 5 and 6 - Friday Afternoon
Develop your case study storyline and outline the procedures for data access and analysis Case Study Development

Record ideas, bullet points, or actual text that will become part of the case study to introduce users to the issues and concepts of the activity. Gather links for appropriate images, diagrams, and background text.

Data Access and Analysis Procedures

Record the name and URL of all datasets and access/analysis software tools to be used. List the major tasks users will complete, then perform a deliberate walk-through of each task to capture the full sequence of procedures. Give special attention to the most difficult or least intuitive steps, and note points in the sequence where additional information will be helpful.

Add Session 5 and 6 Notes here:

IDV Bundles for back yard and regional

Divergence of models - I look at weather.com and see a forecast, then I look at my probe in the NAM and it's quite different - why?

Getting to grandma needing the barf bag - We need a GFS of the isosurface of the jet stream. This gives us the 3-D aspect of weather

Exploration and Evaluation phase includes the idea of adding other parameters either to the probe (right click on the table in the Dashboard) or on the map view (color filled contour display).

Notes added above to the session 2 area

Session 7 - Saturday Morning
Enhance your step-by-step procedures by adding "About" sections that provide extra information; List several ideas for "Going Further" with the data or tools

Fill in any gaps in your activity outline and add sections that can help users make meaning of the data. Suggest several ideas for the "Going Further" section that challenge users to work with the data and/or tools in other investigations. These suggestions provide launching points for scientific inquiry which is facilitated by the skills learned in the activity.

Add Session 7 Notes here:

Session 8 - Final Team Breakout
Finalize your Activity outline and DataSheet, Generate PowerPoint slides for the report out session, Upload all resources to this page

Create a 2- or 3-slide ppt file for the report out session.

• Slide 1: Team name, names of team members, and a brief phrase to describe each individual's contribution
• Slide 2: Working title for your activity, names of dataset(s) and tool(s) utilized
• Slide 3: Your choice of something to illustrate your team's vision of the completed activity

Attach the file plus any other documents produced by the team to this page. Include final versions of the team's DataSheet.

Add Session 8 Notes here:

Power Point is found here - Unidata/COMET powerpoint (PowerPoint 866kB May3 08)