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| CommuniteE-Letter | Volume IV, Number 5, September 2007 |
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| New Unidata Forum: Models as Educational Tools | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Working collaboratively with the Unidata Users Committee, UPC Web Master, Jen Oxelson, has created a forum called "Models as Educational Tools." Its creation originated from a suggestion made during the 2006 Users Workshop. The forum's goal is to provide a place where educators can discuss how they are using models in the classroom as well as sharing their experiences, trade advice, and ultimately, and perhaps most importantly, share their own material; because this is the overarching goal of the effort: creating a "living repository" of quality-checked materials which may be downloaded by educators for use in their own classrooms. Though traditional approaches still have their place, the workshop demonstrated that model use in the classroom is an important tool. More specifically, models to teach complex as well as simple concepts, while not a magic wand, are an indispensable tool in today's educational environments. Such use is here to stay. There's general agreement the workshop was a great success, possibly the best of all time. See also: July/August 2006 e-letter. |
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| News Briefs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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IDV Release A new release of the Integrated Data Viewer (2.3) is now available for download. First released in mid-August, a few of the new 2.3 release features include new image displays, time line choosers and user defined derived quantities. Please see the release notes for a complete list of new features. Annual Report The 2006-2007 Annual report for Unidata's five-year funding proposal was submitted to the National Science Foundation a couple of weeks ago. That proposal, Unidata 2008: Shaping the Future of Data Use in the Geosciences is nearing its period of performance. It seemed fitting (and required!) that as we approach our fiscal year end on the 30th of this month that we needed to take the time to look back at what we accomplished over the past year as well as to begin planning for the year ahead. When you review the report (pdf version), we think you'll agree that it's been a successful year, and most of that success has been achieved with your not inconsiderable cooperation, collaboration, input, and active participation. New Governing Committee Members We are pleased to announce new appointments to our two governing committees. The Policy Committee will welcome new members Mike Bevis (Ohio State University) and Vanda Grubisic (Desert Research Institute) to its fall meeting in Boulder in late October. Current member Paul Ruscher will return to serve a second term. The Users Committee will welcome Bill Gallus (Iowa State University) to its membership. Mike is an observational and a theoretical scientist specializing in the areas of geodesy/geodynamics and geophysics and is a pioneer in GPS meteorology. Vanda's interests are in numerical modeling and field project observations, and she actively supports geoscience education efforts and projects. Paul, a longtime participant in the Unidata community, also has a record of supporting and developing geoscience education tools. He will be cycling IDV use into his classroom teaching beginning this fall. Bill Gallus is no stranger to Unidata. His participation in workshops and his use of Unidata data products and tools give him a great base for Users Committee participation. We've said it before, but it cannot be repeated too often: these committees represent you and your interests in the Unidata arena. You can, and you should, feel free to contact any committee member with your ideas or concerns. Policy Committee members are listed here, and the Users Committee membership is here.
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Please send comments to support-eletter@unidata.ucar.edu |
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