# Presentation: 657107

## Using Live NOAA Satellite Datain the Classroom

- <date/time>

- Using Live NOAA Satellite Datain the Classroom

- Ken Healy
- SOCASTEE HIGH SCHOOL
- MYRTLE BEACH,  SC

**Notes:**
I would like to thank you all for coming today and special thanks to the good folks at NOAA for giving us this opportunity to share ideas.  Ultimately we all have the same goal - an increase in the quality of life for all and the betterment of mankind.

## Home of the Braves! 

- Located 4 miles from the Atlantic Ocean and about 500 yards from the Intracoastal Waterway.
- Elevation 19 ft above sea level
- latitude N33 43’          Longitude W78 52’

**Notes:**
Student population of 1700 presently on a 4x4 block schedule.My teaching assignments are
two blocks of physical science & one meteorology/earth science as an elective

## South Carolina Coast fromthe Shuttle

## About the presenter

- On Socastee High staff 18 years. Presently teaching physical science and meteorology/earth science. Previously taught in New York 14 years.
- Resides in Conway, SC with wife Marge.

**Notes:**
I have been at Socastee for 18 years after teaching 14 years in New York State. I would like to emphasize that my entire background is in education.  I am not a computer “”guru”nor am I a certified meteorologist.  I am simply a classroom teacher that is always trying to find ways to turn kids on to learning - especially in our new information age.

## Slide 5

**Notes:**
Dr.Sagan's words are just as important today as they were in the years before his death.  Students of today have never lived a day without a satellite overhead.  Many of our teachers share the same experience .It is our job as educators in this milllenium to participate in this great information age for the betterment of mankind.
The problems facing society and  planet earth in the years to come are enormous.Populations are exploding while harvest yields may be in jeoprady.Satellites & remote sensing gives us a unique ability to give us real-time assessement.It will be interesting to see if history will show whether we used our capabilities wisely or we squandered our opportunity

## A Quick Look Back

- Reminiscing with October Sky.
- 1957, viewing Sputnik from the rooftops in New York.
- Now in 2001 we can turn on a new generation of sky watchers.

**Notes:**
I can remember as a kid growing up in New York City - going up to the rooftops to try to spot Sputnik as it raced around in its low orbit I can remember air raid drills about as common as today’s fire drills & high school debates centering on bomb shelters. The doors of space were flung open, enticing us with wonderful things to come.Today we have a new standard inthe sky...

## International Space Station Visibility Schedule for Asheville

**Date  Time             From/To   Duration  Elevation**
**10-Mar  5:24AM      SSE/E        4           12**
**11-Mar   5:57AM     SW/NE      7           53**
**12-Mar   5:00AM     SE/ENE      3           20   **
**13-Mar   5:34AM    WSW/NE     4           61**
**14-Mar   4:35AM     E/NE         2           20      **
**14-Mar   6:07AM     W/NNE      5           20**
**                        **
**http://www.hq.nasa.gov/osf/station/viewing/a.html                            **

**Notes:**
If you don't mind getting up early this is for you! Last week there were several early evening passes that many kids when out of their way to view.Not everyone is totally motivated but as educators we need to provide the initiative.Perhaps we will never know who we turned on with a relatively simple gesture.  Even though it is only a pinpoint of light, some students get nore excited than the opening of Armagedon. Why? I suspect the answer is they know its real - happening now & they respond to it.

## First Image from Space

- Three years after Sputnik we were treated to the first image from space having little idea of what was to follow.

## What got me started!

- I had lived in South Carolina only 7 years when Hugo paid a visit.
- The imagery, excitement, & interactive interest produced a real-life learning lab.

**Notes:**
In my early years of teaching, I made it a point to always try to incorporate what was happening in space & weather with my classes.  There was no internet available so basic sources were newspapers, magazine articles & TV.
After 14 years of teaching in New York, my wife & I decided to move out of our comfort zone and see what challenges might lie ahead. I had experienced serious lake effect snows in Oswego & various other atmospheric “treats”over the years, but nothing like Hugo. 

## Hugo infrared from NOAA archives

- After surviving Hugo, it was apparent that satellite imagery & the discussion surrounding them were a high interest item, even for our less motivated students.

**Notes:**
Hugo was sort of an eye-opener because the imagery was really hitting home.
Student interest in the imagery of the storm was extremely high, even by many students who never exhibited emotion about learning anything.  It was after this that I started seriously wanting to learn more because I was excited also.

## Interest images

- The US at night. As educators, satellite technology can really illuminate & “turn on” even reluctant learners.

**Notes:**
Other high interest items were now  being made available although even at this time most schools - Socastee included, were still not connected to the internet. How did they really do all of this? Will this new satellite imagery and processing have educational value. I decided to try to find out.

## Some background on the research

- Dr. Richard Greenberg, a leading researcher at the University of Arizona, found “images are the fastest & most efficient way to deliver information to the human brain.”
- Raphael & Greenberg  concurred with a previous study by Piller & Weiman that counting computers is a “useless way of measuring their effectiveness”.

**Notes:**
I read almost all of Dr. Greenbergs work He instituted a program called IPT - Image Processing for Teachers at the University of Arizona.  The feedback from the trained teachers was quite incredible as to the learning curves achieved.

## An image sliced into a million pixels (comparable to the

-  number of detectors in the human retina) contains about
- 10 million bits of information.  Moreover, the human brain
- can receive that much information in the form of an image
-  in a fraction of a second, roughly a million times faster than
-  written or spoken language.

## Image processing is an intrinsically “constructivist”medium 

- since it was really invented to facilitate exploration &
- discovery in the research community (Yager,1991). Its
- effective use in a classroom requires abandonment of
- “behaviorist” (Pavlov & Skinner) ways of using technology
- for teaching (Greenberg,92).  Greenberg also notes that
- constructivist education guides students to do experiments &
- make observations that may clash with their preconceptions,
- forcing them to change their underlying world view.  This
- process brings on a fundamental change in student’s knowledge
- of their world, going far beyond what can be measured on a
- conventional test.

## Advantages to using direct readout/image processing

- Student Interest tends to be high.
- Even “problem” learners respond positively
- relatively easy to accommodate different learning styles.

## DECISIONS

- Realizing now that images were really a turn-on in the classroom & the internet was still not a classroom reality, I decided to see what it would take to get “real-time”  images.
- MONEY!$$$$
- Lack of....         leads to grant writing

## LUCK HAPPENS!

- The early seed money came from a GTE (now Verizon) Growth Initiatives for Teachers - GIFT- grant.
- We decided on QFAX Explorer, a system from Quorum Communications of Dallas,Texas.
- For a local database, we purchased a Davis Weather Monitor.

## Setup in the classroom

- Dedicated computer running Qfax 24/7.  This receives, stores and catalogs all images. Computer is networked so selected images may be used by students in the computer lab

- In the lab students are able to manipulate images in several ways.
- Pan, zoom,contrast
- determine latitude longitude,sea surface temperatures as well as cloud top temperatures

**Notes:**
We have a computer lab room directly across the hall from my classroom.  I have full use of it two/three days a week as the need arises.  The computer room is equipped with fairly new Gateways.  Qfax is installed on our network server  along with files that I archive. Students can essentially access & work with images anywhere in the building

## Slide 19

**Notes:**
The monitor in the upper left corner is one of two in my room -the other is wall mounted on the other side of the room. Each room has access to cable including the Weather Channel & CNN newmonitorss. Depending on what's happening, I will sometimes start class viewing the Weather Channel.
Using selector buttons and an AV media key, I can display any APT or GOES images onto the classroom monitors.  I also run video from vcr's and laser disc through these. I also believe in
decent audio is really important so I send all audio through an old receiver & distribute it to speakers in the back of the room.    ret up to display any video from either tape. The blank screenwiibe displaying our new gvar system.

## Local Station -Davis Instruments

- Temperature - inside outside
- windspeed/direction
- raingauge
- pressure
- dew point
- wind chill

**Notes:**
The good folks at www.weathergraphics.com  have a freeware program available called Meteogram which will convert all your local data to a meteogram similar to Datastreme's.  It is only available for Davis monitors.

**Notes:**
This is the Predict page of QFax. At the present time we have it tracking NOAA 12, 14, 15, 16.  Images fron NOAA12 & 14
tend to be the most reliable. Some of the sensors on board 15 & 16 are having difficulty.  We also monitor Meteor 3-5 although we haven't received any images from it recently.
Qfax will automatically look for & download images as soon as any of the satellites in the menu get 8 degrees above the horizon plane of our roof. This of course relates to the polar orbiters.  The only drawback here is we cannot have Qfax switch automatically to receive GOES.
Generally what I do at the present time is catch the morning NOAA passes then switch to GOES where we run an animate
capture for water vapor, infrared & visible.  
With the addition of a new dish & the purchase of a GVAR system from Aquila Systems, we will monitor GOES and the polar orbiters separately.

## Boltek Lightning detector

- We added a Boltek detector last fall. It will differentiate between lightning & “noise” and has been an impressive performer on many occasions. We took one of our older machines  & dedicated it to running Stormtracker.

## Using Weathernode on a dedicated computer

**Notes:**
We frequently use Weathernode to "ground-truth" student work. In the national mode displayed here, we can bring up forecasts,warnings, present conditions of any place in the United States.  Even faculty far removed from science stop by
if they are planning a trip.Commercial free and as up to date as possibel

- We run Weathernode 24/7 on an older dedicated computer
- If you were to print all the data coming in it would deliver almost 20,000 pages every day!
- We use it frequently to ground-truth satellite images
- This is the national radar summary

## Student computer lab

**Notes:**
This is our computer room which is directly across the hall from 
my classroom.It contains 32 computers, mostly Gateways with a few older Dells.  All have internet access with a strong firewall.  All print to a Hewlett-Packard 4000 printer.  The room also has a color printer but students must have peermission to access it. This was decided on administratively
since the cost of color cartridges was skyrocketing if students had "free"access to color.

## Our Setup at SocasteeUp on the Roof!

- One APT antenna for the polar orbiters
- One 5 ft mesh dish for GOES
- One 10 ft dish for our new GVAR system
- One Boltek lightning detector
- Davis  sensors for temperature, wind direction, wind speed, rainfall, humidity

## UP ON THE ROOF!

- Dish on left is 5ft diameter currently used to receive the GOES signal.
- The ten foot dish on right will also be used to capture the GOES  GVAR signal.

**Notes:**
These dishes are easily obtainable today.  I ran an ad one time in our local paper asking if anyone would be interested in donating an unused dish for educational purposes.  I received  9 responses - many folks are going to cable or the smaller digital dishes.

## APT Antenna

- This antenna receives the signals from the polar orbiters, We presently monitor NOAA 12 & NOAA 14.

**Notes:**
This is a quadfiliar antenna that we purchased from Vanguard Electronics in New York. We selected stainless steel arms rather than aluminum.What they capture are the ...

## The POES satellites!

- POLAR                            ORBITING                  ENVIRONMENTAL             SATELLITES/
- In orbit about 450        miles above the earth

## Hurricane Bonnie

- This image was processed by a  10th grade student with no formal computer training.

## Predict screen of QFAX

## Daily Images from the polar orbiters

## Hurricane Floyd 1999

## NOAA 14 image for class use

## APT images of Floyd

## GOES looks at Floyd -1999

- Image  courtesy of NOAA
- Hurricane Floyd received the early attention of coastal South Carolina students.

## Hurrricane Floyd   approaching the coast

- As you can imagine, interest was running quite high at this point - the size, the uncertainty!
- Image captured at Socastee by Qfax

## What GOES AROUND...

- GOES Views the earth Geostationary                     Operational                   Environmental               Satellite

## Great sites for classroom use

- Weather.noaa.gov/ radar
- Bring up radar for your area.

## WWW.ametsoc.org/dstreme

**WWW.ametsoc.org/dstreme**

- At this site you can get a daily summary of the days weather with supplemental information.
- Surface Information such as temperatures,pressures,isobars,isotherms,radar, and fronts are all available & up to date.

## NOAA provides images of the day. Subscribe WWW.OSEI.GOV

- S'COOL Summer Workshop 2001!! NASA Invites You to Participate July 16 - July 20, 2001
- For more info: www.larc.nasa.gov/SCOOL/

-  Teachers are  some what notorious for causing and accepting change.  It is imperative in the sciences  that teachers use their computer availability to truly explore the scientific method.
-  Observing, hypothesizing, analyzing, predicting and synthesizing are all strong  components of satellite image processing.

## Slide 44