Tavelli Elementary students become avid WeatherBugs
By Gary Raham
Correspondent
Sixth graders Alyssa Spomer and Bob Maxey at Tavelli Elementary School
are discovering that even if you can't control the weather, learning about
it can be lots of fun.
To demonstrate, they toured the WeatherBug web site with teacher Beverly
Bachman and three fourth grade apprentices, looking for trivia questions
to challenge their fellow students and, hopefully, turn them on to the
joys of weather watching. The PSD Foundation made their explorations possible
by providing money to upgrade the weather station perched on the school's
roof and enroll its students in the nationwide WeatherBug program that
delivers live local weather conditions, forecasts, and life-saving weather
alerts.
WeatherBug Achieve, an award-winning, interactive learning program, allows
teachers to apply real-world technology to teach concepts in math, science
and geography. If Tavelli's budding meteorologists are as successful in
sparking interest in weather-related topics as Bachman thinks, she hopes
the school and community will continue to fund the program in future years.
Students have been collecting Tavellian weather data and posting it on
a "Weather Watch" board. Temperature, wind speed, precipitation, air pressure
and even the amount of daily sunlight can be followed second-by-second.
Tavelli readily shares its data with other area schools and with more than
7,000 member schools nationwide.
A Colorado State University writing project for young students also directs
students in using WeatherBug data to plan multi-day trips. They take available
math and scientific data and have students write about it--perhaps to
plan the appropriate clothes, activities and other considerations necessary
for a multi-day field trip.
WeatherBug, whose parent company is AWS Convergence Technologies, Inc.,
claims to be the leading provider of weather information services. Anyone
can discover more information about WeatherBug and WeatherBug Achieve by
visiting www.weatherbugachieve.com.
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