Don't Tell Them - Show Them the Data

Examining data is a fundamental practice in science. Environmental Science in particular relies on the understanding of scientific data to motivate people to lessen their contributions of human impacts on the Earth. In this session we will be demonstrating the educational use of NOAA curated datasets and data visualizations that allow teachers the ability to show not tell. Included will be the demonstration of a new interactive Earth display for a flat screen personal computer coming out of the NOAA Science On a Sphere project (SOS), SOS Explorer. This tool will provide teachers and students access to the library of SOS datasets and movies as well as from other data providers, like NOAA View. The visualizations show information provided by satellites, ground observations and computer models and rapidly animate through real-time global data. In addition, tools included in the application allow users to zoom into, probe, and graph the data, as well as add supplementary save-able material including websites, videos, pictures, and place marks. In order to make the product more accessible for teachers, lesson plans and pre-programmed tours through standards-relevant topics will be included. This session will offer a chance to test our developmental version of SOS Explorer. SOS Explorer Basic is set to release in August of 2015. The premium version will be available soon after in 2016.