Final Project by Sharon

My final project includes coaching teachers how to teach weather to students using technology.

Some of the components include using a camera to take daily pictures of the sky and weather activity occurring outside.  Use the "VoiceThread" website to allow students to narrate their photos. Make it accessible to the public and allow others to comment.  The Google calendar can be used to record in words what the weather is doing that day and also to record the temperature.  If thermometers are not available a website like www.weather.com can be used to find out the weather report temperature in your area.  Any website used will be documented in diigo so that students can easily get to them.

I would suggest to teachers to choose "reporters" to do a weather report in the morning.  This could include students writing a quick script, edit it, and present/produce it for an audience of students.   It could be done daily as part of the morning announcements.  These reports could be recorded either before or during the presentation so that students can review them to look for ways to improve and comment on what they like.

I would encourage teachers to use Quizlet by going to http://quizlet.com to either practice weather vocabulary already in the databank or to create your own cards with relevant vocabulary.

Another component I would add is to find someone or a class in another location that may have different weather, ie:  Maine vs. Florida, and Skype with them to discuss weather patterns, daily weather, differences in temperature, etc.  Also, students could discuss what is done with leisure time relevant to weather and climate, ie:  skiing, snowboarding vs. surfing, water sports.  It can show how climate can effect how people live, ie:  paying for heat in the winter in Maine vs. paying for air conditioning in Florida.

To see what is going on in other parts of the world a good resource is www.earthweek.com.  This website has a newsfeed component to keep you updated on earthly conditions.  It tells you the hottest and coldest temperatures on earth documented that particular week.  Other extreme weather information in the world is also documented in this website such as if a hurricane or typhoon occurred anywhere and where that location might be.