Weather antenna draws students

El Morro Elementary School students are learning how to forecast storms and comprehend weather-related data such as temperature and barometric pressure with help from a monitoring system that provides real-time information.

Last summer crews placed an antenna, called a WeatherBug tracking station, atop the school that relays data into online classroom lessons through WeatherBug Achieve, a web-based teaching tool, according to the Laguna Beach Unified School District website.

The technology was created for businesses, governments and schools to provide up-to-the-minute severe weather alerts.

The program and antenna, paid for by the school’s Parent Teacher Assn., cost $7,500 and is aligned with the national and state standards for math, science and geography. Lesson plans are interactive, dynamic and hands-on and students are able to navigate at their own pace, the district’s website says.

Students in all grades learn how to read temperature using bar graphs, comprehend barometric pressure, and understand El Niño and La Niña, according to the website.

Having the real-time data at their fingertips has helped fuel discussion in Cama Stevens’ third-grade classroom.

The program has encouraged Stevens and her students to discuss and make charts pertaining to the weather in Laguna and beyond.

One day Stevens said she couldn’t stop sneezing. So, students went online to look at the area’s pollen count.

In another example, students viewed live pictures of an active Hawaiian volcano, learning about tectonic plate shifts, Stevens said.

California’s continuous sunny weather means the students sometimes have to look elsewhere for inspiration.

“I can not create a special lesson, especially when the weather has been boring,” Stevens said.

But they can look at storms in other states to jump-start a discussion.

“My mom lives in Florida, which has had some crazy weather,” Stevens said. “[Students] could see thunder and lightning and talked about why they are not getting a drought.”

With the antenna, El Morro is now one of a local television’s weather stations. Principal Chris Duddy said parents on two occasions have told him they saw the school’s forecast on the news.

The hope, Duddy said, is for students to analyze the weather reports and eventually graph the data.

“It puts students at the control of their own learning,” Stevens said.