Following Earth Observatory’s Lead

Are you looking for inspiration? NASA's Earth Observatory is a great exemplar of what a public portal can be.
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A Colorful Winter Storm

A major winter storm made its way across the continental United States this week, dropping snow across the Dakotas, then the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic before finally heading out to sea over the Northeast.
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The Fuss About Digital Textbooks

Last week, two major events stirred up the digital learning field. On Thursday, Apple held their Education Event during which they launched iBooks 2 and the corresponding iBooks Author tool. While much hay has been made on Apple's proprietary…
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Many Users, Many Needs

Last fall I attended the annual meeting of the Mid Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observation Regional Association. That's MACOORA for those of you who love acronyms. And if you do, then you'll be excited to hear that an underlying theme of the meeting…
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Painting Temperatures by Number

Today is the Solstice, and pretty soon the dog days of sumer will be here. (Though, for those of us in the Northeast, we've already seen our fair share.) As things begin to heat up, I figured it would be appropriate to highlight some of the…
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What’s out there

Real-time data use in classrooms and other educational settings has gained a lot of attention in recent years. But the challenges to using and incorporating data effectively are still immense. Most of us are still in the prototype phase, trying…

Sea Surface Temperature

In the first of several series I hope to start on this blog, let start off with our first installment of Better Know a Dataset. Given that New Jersey is currently in the midst of a sweltering heat wave (record highs around 103 °F were set it many places today), it seems only appropriate that we should start with Sea Surface Temperature.
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An Ocean View

We now live in an ocean of data. Scientific advances today, whether in economics, medicine, homeland security or earth science, all rely on the collection and analysis of mountains of data. The technological and communications revolutions of the last few decades have made it easier to monitor and collect data from every facet of society and the environment. The challenge for the next generation of scientists will be to make sense of all this information.