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An Instructor's Not So Comprehensive Guide to Designing
Instructional Support in an On-line Environment
Using Real-Time Data
The best use of the Internet is being able to "mine" the data fields. In fact there are probably more activities dealing with data and science than any other academic field. One of the best topics is weather. It is one of these areas which teachers can design lessons that give students a feel for "data mining."
I will use two activities from my Webtext book to illustrate how this can be accomplished. It is not the intent to teach any particular topics in this paper but to illustrate ways that teachers can incorporate data into their lessons.
Meteorology
This particular activity requires students to analyze the upper atmospheric data which is provided by balloons launched by the National Weather Service. This is not an activity to have students do unless they have studied this aspect of weather. If you have read the section on Tools, then you know you can use Forms to have students answer the questions and have their answers sent as an e-mail message to the instructor.
Oceanography
In oceanography, a great activity is plotting ocean buoy data. This activity uses data from free floating buoys to trace ocean currents. The data was collected from NOAA's buoy data page. Through the use of NIH Imaging software and a map, the data is plotted and measured.
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