5 Oceanography Classroom Resources

Here are 5 Oceanography resources you can use in your classroom:

Office of Naval Research

The Office of Naval Research, an official U.S. Navy website, provides excellent resources for educators to teach about oceanography.  Resources include ocean characteristics, habitats, ocean life and ocean regions. The website also includes information about their research vessels.  

NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a wonderful page full of resources for teachers.  If you are needing resources for ocean currents, ocean floor features, tides and tsunamis.  Each topic includes multimedia resources, lesson plans and activities and even information about careers students could have in this field.  

Kathy Schrock's Guide

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators, who's guide has a plethora of resources on almost everything, also includes resources on Oceanography.  The guide includes multiple links to several resources that cover oceanography.  If you need a good starting point to your research, this is the best place to start. 

PBS - NOVA

NOVA, a resource from PBS, provides several resources to learn about Oceanography.  Resources include classroom activities, ideas shared by other teachers and interactive resources for students.  The interactive resources is a solid way to get students engaged.  One of the interactive resources provided is "Anatomy of a Tsunami" - which provides diagrams and animated videos and images.  

NASA

NASA is a outstanding resource to engage students in the learning of Oceanography.  Resources include ocean topography, sea surface temperatures, climate variability, carbon cycle and the water cycle. Each topic includes images and data.  NASA also provides a few interactive resources such as "Ocean Motion". This interactive shows animated videos of ocean currents.  

5 Free Apps to stay informed of Severe Weather

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been several storms in the area I live in that have produced Tornadoes.  Thankfully no one has been hurt and everyone has stayed safe.  

With technology like tablets and smartphones, you can be alerted to severe weather warnings and events without having to be near a radio or TV.  Here are 5 resources you can use to stay informed of severe weather when it occurs:

Intellicast (IOS, Android) is a excellent resource to check out current weather radars and severe weather alerts.  The app also offers push notifications for your phone/tablet whenever there are severe weather alerts for your area (Severe Thunderstorm Watches/Warnings, Tornado Watches/Warnings, etc.)  With the push notifications enabled, you can be alerted of what is going on without even being in the app.  You can also access Intellicast by going to their website at www.intellicast.com.  

The Weather Channel app (IOS, Android, Windows) is also a handy app to have when needing updates on severe weather and radars. The app also provides push alerts to your phone just in case you are not in the app or not aware of any severe weather events in your area.  You can also get weather forecasts for the week ahead or for the current day. You can also get this information via The Weather Channel website at www.weather.com.

Accuweather (IOS, Android, Windows) provides a excellent app severe weather and weather forecasting.  Along with the other apps mentioned thus far, this app also provides push notifications in case of severe weather, weather forecasts and weather radars.  The app also includes news and videos related to weather events.  You also have the choice of sharing your current weather conditions on social media websites like Twitter and Facebook. 

The Weatherbug app (IOS, Android) is a great weather app to have in you need to look at the weather forecast, weather radars or receive alerts for severe weather.  Weatherbug provides also a lightning detector called "Spark".  This gives you a idea of how many lightning strikes are in a certain area.  The app also provides live weather cams from different locations across the United States.   

The TVN Weather Live Storm Chasing app is one of my favorites.  If you watched Storm Chasers when it was on the Discovery Channel (or caught it currently on Netflix), you'll be familiar with Reed Timmer.  Dubbed as a "extreme Meteorologist", he, along with multiple other chasers for TVN (Tornado Videos.net) chase tornadoes.  This app provides weather radars and live video feed from chasers who are online.  So, if you are looking for live video of potential tornadoes in your area, this app has you covered.  This can also be accessed from their website, www.tvnweather.com.       

Programing Tutorials - Learn coding with screencasts

Programming Tutorials - a app on the Windows store, is a great app to help you get started coding.  The app, which requires Windows 8.1 to run, provides free screen-casts that give you a step by step guide to coding.

The screen-casts range from programming languages such as HTML, Javascript, Java, Ruby, PHP and several others.  Each programming language has it's own set of screen-casts.

If you looking into creating a Windows Store app, Android app or a Iphone app, this app has you covered. The series of screen-casts for the Windows Store app development, for example, is a very well done series created by Bob Tabor (www.learnvisualstudio.net).  If you don't have Windows 8.1 to run this app, you can head on over to Bob Tabor's website and watch these videos for free.  Click here to visit the free screen-casts lists on his website.

Looking for more coding resources?  Feel free to visit my Coding 101 Livebinder:

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