I attended a session presented by some folks from NOAA called Data in the Classroom. No, it’s not about student assessments and NCLB! It’s about an effort to make the huge amount of data that NOAA has on the oceans and atmosphere accessible to students and teachers for problem solving and inquiry. Rather than just saying “Here is it is, have fun” they’ve created several modules (El Nino and Sea Level are ready now) that guide teachers and students through what they call “levels of scaled interaction.” In other words, each module has five levels of lessons ranging from teacher-presented ones through letting students explore the data to full-blown problem solving and invention. Each module shows the associated data in a variety of formats and guides the users through how to interpret it. There are “checkup” questions throughout, and teachers can download the materials. Even though the modules have been field tested, the NOAA folks are asking for additional feedback. (I played around a little this evening and my feedback is WOW). The address is www.dataintheclassroom.org
If anyone has info on resources from other NOAA sessions, feel free to add a comment here and tell us about them.