EWOC Conference Write Up Day 5: Friday 7th July 2006.

Lots more interesting presentations today. Ross Reynolds from the University of Reading started the conference by telling us about a project that he has been involved in to teach the weather to gifted and talented students in the UK through NAGTY.

NAGTY stands for the NationalAcademy for Gifted and Talented Youth. I had never heard of NAGTY before and some further research seems to indicate that it is only available for children in England (is there a Scottish version?). According to their web site NAGTY has a particular remit to support those at the top end of the ability range (the top 5%). Ross’s project sounded very interesting and I was even more interested when he showed some photographs of the Dorset Coastline (my old stomping ground!). In Scotland we often talk about catering for the top and bottom 20% of students. But I often wonder if we really do stretch the top 20%? All two often classroom teaching (my own included) is aimed at the lower end of the academic spectrum and becomes disengaging for more able students. A project like Ross’s based around a theme (metrology, drama, creative writing, ICT etc…) and making extensive use of outside expertise (a meteorologist, an actor, a poet, a computer programmer etc…) seems a really good way of doing this.

During his talk Ross also pointed out a couple of good web sites. The first was European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and the second the Dundee Satellite Receiving Station. I have used the second site before but not visited it for a while – there would be some great scope here for some ICT Standard Grade Weather Enquiry work.

Thomas Halenka (Czech Republic) also gave an interesting overview of Weather and Climate Education in the European School Curriculum. Thomas gave me a copy of his slides which I may use in a separate post. The differences in science education across Europe are very interesting.

I also enjoyed Roberta Johnson’s presentation on ‘ Bringing Magacity Environmental Impacts to the Global Community of Learners and Educators’. The presentation was about the climatic effects caused by Mexico City on areas outside of Mexico. The project used the Windows to the Universe web site as its main way to distribute the information. Again I have seen this web site before, but it was good to have another look around. There are lots of things that could be used for student enquiry. One of the things that I like about the site is that you can choose the difficulty of text between beginner – intermediate – advanced.

After a coffee break Joseph Lamos told us about the work he has been doing to develop a short course on watersheds. If you teach hydrosphere or river systems this is definitely worth a look, open up the run off page here wait for the flash file to download and then click on begin (bottom left and corner) The animations are fantastic. Joseph also is keen to encourage people to use this information and adapt it to suit any educational purpose. Other courses and animations can be found at www.meted.ucar.edu

After lunch there were a number of presentations on Globe Activities. Again Globe is something that I have used before and would encourage any teachers to take part in. I am definitely going to try and get involved in Globe at Night for next year. If you have never been to the globe teachers area (referred to as Educators Corner) its worth a quick look. How about this as a homework activity for reinforcing maximum and minimum temperature? Or this to help students learn the names of countries? Or what about this cloud quiz?

Overall a productive conference – I want to write up some of the conversations I had with Viki, George and the other conference delegates at a separate time. But hopefully the last few posts have given you a flavour of what I’ve been up to over the past few days and also given me an opportunity to share some of the things that I have seen.