Everyone is affected by climate and weather. As you can see, instructors in Oregon have found that many interesting activities and applications can be constructed with weather as the context. It is possible to learn and practice skills in math, reading, writing, graphing, and research through an interest in the weather. Furthermore, there is an abundance of real climate and weather data on the Internet. This topic really makes use of the science and technology available to us now.

Many of these Oregon activities can be used in other regions without adaptation. In case you want to write some lessons that are particular to your state or region, here are some tips:

1. Look for special climate and weather conditions that can be found in your area: do you have hurricanes or typhoons? Do you have a confluence of rivers? If so, do you watch the flood stages? Is strong wind a factor in your lives? How about excessive heat, humidity, snow, or climate variation? Concentrate your projects on those special conditions that are factors in your lives. Ask learners in your programs to determine the topics of interest to them. Oregon has a reputation for having a lot of rain, so that was one of our themes. We also have distinct geographical regions, so we used those differences to construct some activities.
2. Consider forming a working team of instructors in your state or region. If possible, try to meet face-to-face in the beginning. We met together as we started to construct these activities. Most of the rest of the communication in our project was through e-mail, because our regional NIFL/LINCS hub director established an electronic discussion list for us. We did lesson field-testing and revisions through use of e-mail.
3. Consider doing a project involving student use of e-mail between two or more class groups from different parts of your region. Two instructors on our team decided to do an e-mail project between students in their programs. The groups represented two very different geographical areas, and that made for a rich exchange of information and experiences.
4. Plan for this process to take a lot longer than you could ever imagine! It is worth the work, however. We have had a lot of fun, we've learned a lot about Internet-based resources, and we've seen, once again, that the learning of skills in context has great value.

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Design by: Western/Pacific Literacy Network -- Revised 12/06/99