Weather, Weather Everywhere

1
Weather, Weather Everywhere

• Brian Phillips
• Holtville High School
• Holtville, CA

2
Introduction

• I am a Technology Resource Teacher for a small
  school district, and one of my goals was for
  students to being to use technology as an
  extension of their basic classroom tools. The
  lesson I choose to create was based on the NETS
  standards. The students collect weather data
  from the internet, and enter their data into a
  spreadsheet, and as a culminating activity the
  students create graphs and import them to a
  PowerPoint presentation. The lesson is titled
  Weather, Weather Everywhere!
• Brian Phillips
• Holtville, CA

3
Expectations

• I expected to learn new technologies.
• I expected to working with others who were at the
  same level of technology experience, not at an
  entry level.
• I expected to create a lesson that infused
  technology.

4
Actual Learning

• The learning that I actually learned from
  CTAP295, was not the technology. I already had
  the technology skills. What I gained, were the
  thought processes that go into creating a
  standards based lesson. Aligning lessons to
  standards can be difficult at first, but in time
  the process becomes much easier, and you are able
  to look beyond one subject area and being to look
  across the curriculum. That I feel was my
  shortcoming, was that I look at standards in one
  single area, not across the curriculum.

5
Successes

• Students learned how to use a spreadsheet, and to
  create graphs.
• RSP student was able to complete the lesson, with
  little guidance
• Students were able to complete the project, with
  very little difficulty

6
Shortcomings

• Students had to be taught PowerPoint.
• The first days activities were too detailed.
• Daily activities were too short. Lesson could
  have been completed in a couple of hours.

7
Results
I took a sample of the 16 students that were in
the class. This particular set of students made
progress. Student 13 did not make any measurable
progress, but the student did walk away from the
lesson with greater understanding of graphs in
general.
8
Revisions

• The revision that I made was that for the first
  part of the lesson, students only collected
  weather data, without actually inputting it into
  the spreadsheet. I changed the lesson so that
  students would be inputting their daily data in
  the spreadsheets daily.

9
Concluding Statement

• It was a wonderful experience being a part of a
  statewide project. However, the project itself
  was extremly time consuming. I felt that most of
  the class time was spent teaching technology to
  the Blue MMs.
• I was also dissappointed that the lesson needed
  to be web-based and not web-posted. I felt that
  putting that requirement on the project limited
  the variety of lessons that we would be able to
  provide.
• Aside from that, I think that this project is a
  wonderful thing and needs to be continued. This
  was the first year, and there are going to be
  issues that come up, but those things can be
  fixed and improved. I look forward to what
  happens to CTAPOnline in the coming years.