Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) is a bold and revolutionary paradigm that through a Web-based Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) exposes the user to a rich environment of data, models, data mining and visualization/analysis tools, enabling the user to ask science questions of applications while the complexity of the software and middleware managing these applications is hidden from the user. From its inception in 2003, LEAD has championed goals that have context for the future of weather and related research and education. LEAD espouses to lowering the barrier for using complex end-to-end weather technologies by a) democratizing the availability of advanced weather technologies, b) empowering the user of these technologies to tackle a variety of problems, and c) facilitating learning and understanding.

LEAD, as it exists today, is poised to enable a diverse community of scientists, educators, students, and operational practitioners. The project has been informed by atmospheric and computer scientists, educators, and educational consultants who, in search of new knowledge, understanding, ideas, and learning methodologies, seek easy access to new capabilities that allow for user-directed and interactive query and acquisition, simulation, assimilation, data mining, computational modeling, and visualization. As one component of the total LEAD effort, the LEAD education team has designed interactive, integrated, instructional pathways within a set of learning modules (LEAD-to-Learn) to facilitate, enhance, and enable the use of the LEAD gateway in the classroom. The LEAD education initiative focuses on the means to integrate data, tools, and services used by researchers into undergraduate meteorology education in order to provide an authentic and contextualized environment for teaching and learning. Educators, educational specialists, and students from meteorology and computer science backgrounds have collaborated on the design and development of learning materials, as well as new tools and features, to enhance the appearance and use of the LEAD portal gateway and its underlying cyberinfrastructure in an educational setting.

The development of educational materials has centered on promoting the accessibility and use of meteorological data and analysis tools through the LEAD portal by providing instructional materials, additional custom designed tools that build off of Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) (e.g. IDV Basic and NCDestroyer), and an interactive component that takes the user through specific tasks utilizing multiple tools. In fact, select improvements to parameter lists and domain subsetting have inspired IDV developers to incorporate changes in IDV revisions that are now available to the entire community. This collection of materials, demonstrations, interactive guides, student exercises, and customized tools, which are now available to the educator and student through the LEAD portal gateway, can serve as an instructional pathway for a set of guided, phenomenon-based exercises (e.g. fronts, lake-effect snows, etc.).

This paper will provide an overview of the LEAD education and outreach efforts with a focus on the design of Web-based educational materials and instructional approaches for user interaction with the LEAD portal gateway, and will encourage educators, especially those involved in undergraduate meteorology education, to begin incorporating these capabilities into their course materials. This paper is presented in conjunction with a poster demonstration on the LEAD-to-Learn modules.