Mike is the kind of teacher school boards, parents and teachers all hope to find. His energy and enthusiasm for science and technology are matched only by his enthusiasm for bringing those subjects to kids. And his K-8 school, the Ophir School in Big Sky, Montana, is the kind of school every teacher dreams of. With just 104 students and a reasonably healthy budget (thanks to the school's location in a resort community), Ophir School is the hub of activities for families with children. The nearest big town is Bozeman, which is 45 miles away.

Mike says his classroom is definitely "teched out." As the new school building was being designed and built, he was able to oversee the networking and electrical components of his classroom. The school board's commitment to science and technology meant that he had to seek grant funds simply to fill in the gaps. And because Mike built the classroom computers himself, Ophir School students now have the luxury of 60 computers!

An important part of Mike's sixth grade curriculum is a weather unit. With a computer for every student in the room, Mike realized that he could use the internet to spark and draw from his sixth grader's own curiosity about weather. With his students, Mike found that there were two local web sites reporting weather conditions. One weather station, which belonged to the Big Sky Ski Resort, was located on top of a nearby mountain. The other was at the Gallatin National Airport in Bozeman. Half of Mike's students began collecting the daily high and low temperatures reported by the station on the mountain, while half collected the same data from the airport station. Needless to say, the students noticed a difference. Even though the two stations were just 45 miles apart, the data was quite different. Students also noticed that their own local weather sometimes seemed more like Bozeman's than that of the closer resort; sometimes it was the other way around.

"One day a student went in to Bozeman for an appointment, and came back to report that the temperature at the airport was 60°, while the temperature here at school was 30°!" remembers Mike. It must have been a glorious moment for Mike when the students said, "Hey, if we want accurate data, we need a weather station right here!"

And they didn't have to beg; not with Mike as a teacher. "At first, I thought it would be nice to have the kids build our own station, and I looked at some kits," he remembers. "But they were all kind of 'rag-tag' and didn't look like they would last more than a year or two."

Then he came across the Davis web site, and was very happily surprised at the price of the Vantage Pro. He realized that using grant money to purchase a Davis weather station would be a very good use of the funds. He also realized that the level of technology and quality Davis offered was just what his rather technologically savvy students needed.

"I asked the class what they thought, and they went nuts!" Mike said

Since the kids helped set up the Vantage Pro, the Weather Project "has just exploded." The project has been the focus of stories in the local press, and the students have been able to offer weather services to the community as part of Ophir School's "service learning" program.

"We started out by using my students' original observation that the weather was different here than in Bozeman. Half the class continued to track the airport data, while half tracked our own data from the Vantage Pro. Of course they saw a big difference."

Back in September, 2001, the students began graphing temperatures by hand on graph paper. That exercise allowed them to see trends - and it also made them more than eager to learn how to graph using the computer and Excel. Now they are all Excel fluent. They even use formulas to create averages and daily highs and lows, and are beginning to predict daily highs and lows based on their own historical data.

"At Ophir School, we believe in an integrated approach to teaching. We bring science, language, math, social studies into every subject. The Weather Project has been such an easy fit to that approach," he told us. "And it is universally popular. Both girls and boys are interested in it - I find that the girls especially are into the organization and collection aspects."

All the students are involved in presentations to the school board and to the community. They help maintain the web site and create Power Point presentations about the Weather Project. The Big Sky Institute at Montana State University is now working with the kids on probability and on a GPS system. And Mike has plans to take his students to the University to offer a presentation, complete with PowerPoint slides and carefully collected data, to the university students.

As the din in his classroom began to escalate, and the wrestling mats began to call his name, Mike told us a parting story about a geologist who had visited his classroom earlier in the day. "He was just amazed at the amount of technology, and he told me that five years ago he would have considered himself very lucky to have a lab as well equipped."

Mike's sixth graders are indeed lucky. They've got a teacher who understands that technology will open the doorways through which their curiosity will lead them. And on the other side of those doorways will emerge young adults who will delight in a scientific mystery, heed their own observations, challenge assumptions, communicate their knowledge, and understand that the worlds of science, nature, culture, and arts are interconnected.

Don't miss the Ophir School web site. The site itself is a testament to Mike Coon's ability to help his students integrate visual and linguistic communications with technology! Teachers will especially enjoy Mike's Lesson Plan and Jenny's Excel graph. It is at: http://home.mcn.net/~ophir/. (You'll also find their weather page on our Weather World 'Round page.)

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