84th AMS Annual Meeting

Sunday, 11 January 2004
Earth Update / Space Update: fun ways to teach earth and space weather
Hall 4AB
Anastasia Furitsch, Reagan Middle School, Houston, TX; and P. Reiff and C. Law
Poster PDF (3.0 MB)
An easy "digital library for the rest of us" allows simple one-click display of realtime images and weather data. Activities that put the students into earth and space weather can be fun as well as educational. A TicTacToe game has questions that can be customized for the subjects taught. A Data Miner activity allows global mapping of country-based resource databases such as water usage, endangered species or forest acreage (from the World Resources Institute) and simple mining tools such as Per-person or per-acre. Space Weather activities include spectroscopy and monitoring the Sun's rotation and activity. Realtime images of the sun and aurora from space are accessed easily and safely, since the software is NOT a web browser. Many activities aligned with national standards are available from our web site: http://earth.rice.edu/activities, and the program is described at http://earth.rice.edu/. The software is designed either as an exhibit or as a teaching tool. Teachers can receive free copies of the software at the poster.

Supplementary URL: http://earth.rice.edu