Weather, Weather Everywhere Brian Phillips Holtville High School Holtville, CA

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!Weather, Weather Everywhere! Brian Phillips Holtville, CA

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 M&Ms. 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.