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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Using Online Data in Inquiry - Is Iowa's climate changing?



Data for this graph was obtained from:

The above website allowed me to research yearly rainfall totals for the Des Moines, Iowa airport for the last one hundred years. You can easily change what type of data you would like to see as well as changing your location within the state. Access to this data provides students with the opportunity to research and collect data, analyze the data, organize the data in tables or charts, and create conclusions the data supports. These are all necessary thinking skills in the inquiry process.

For example, I copied and pasted monthly and yearly precipitation totals in excel and had excel graph yearly totals over time. Above is a graph showing my results and I also had excel add a trendline with the equation to see if the yearly amounts of precipitation are changing in the state of Iowa. The access and work with this data would be a great activity for students to generate an argument for global warming and climate change.

Note: I had to do some formatting in excel as well as saving the graph as a jpeg image before uploading to blogger. These skills may take some direct instruction for students to develop these skills.


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1 comment:

  1. knodelscienceJuly 6, 2010 at 9:37 PM

    You're right..an argument for climate change from this activity would be great for students at all levels.
    I don't know anything about the climate in Iowa (except I bet it is a lot warmer over there then here in Mt today), but it would be interesting for students to repeat this activity with a new location...maybe across the state or where their grandparents, friends, cousins, etc live.

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