The CIMSS iPad Library and ESIP Teacher Workshops

The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison launched a new initiative in 2012 to engage teachers and students in data acquisition and regional climate studies. The CIMSS iPad Library, part of a NASA funded Climate Literacy Ambassadors project, loans iPads to science teachers for an entire school year. The first units were distributed at a NOAA funded teacher workshop conducted at the annual Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) summer conference.

Educators learned about numerous NOAA and NASA resources at the ESIP Teacher Workshop and also several different climate-related Apps, including SatCam, an application for iOS devices that allows users to collect observations of local cloud and surface conditions coordinated with an overpass of the Terra, Aqua, or Suomi NPP satellite.

This presentation will outline connections between the Climate Literacy Ambassadors community and ESIP Teacher Workshops before delving into details about the new iPad Library and SatCam. We will discuss considerations and challenges related to a technology loaning library, software recoding to HTML5, and some advantages and limitations related to iPads. We will also share feedback acquired over the fall from ESIP Educators using the SatCam App with their students with the iPads they borrowed (like books) from the CIMSS iPad Library.