Weather Widget Wrapup

How's the Weather where you live?
Do you need to know?
Knowing the weather and providing students a chance to read and analyze the weather report through online widgets educates them to find trends and even learn to predict based on available evidence.

Even though all weather reporting originates through weather.gov, they do not offer a widget, so you can find many types of weather widgets from a multitude of other sources.

Are all weather widgets created equal? Are the weather reports for all weather widgets created equal? How are they the same? How the various weather widgets different?

Weather.com has a widget that can be used on your website or blog. You can also get a weather.com desktop or mobile widget.

Erie Weather Forecast, KS (66733)

Another weather widget was one I found at the Fort Hayes State University TECS 390 class network is part of a package of widgets that you can use on a website or blog called yourminis: web widgets

While there are over 60 variations of this weather widget, the weather information comes from the Weather Channel. When you provide a city or zip code, the weather report on the widget belongs to that locale.

The Great Yarmouth Wether Widget is the one that would be very adaptable, yet it has an interesting background that could be used as is.


Accu-Weather has a widget with a basic level that is free. There also premium services, but the basic widget has a nice background with a map.

This is the webpage widget, and there is code for a MySpace widget also.

Weather Forecast | Weather Maps | Weather Radar

Ada Lovelace Day: Honoring Tamsin WeatherPixie

Life often becomes more powerful through the relationships we make. Whether the opportunities are face-to-face or online, we can meet people in the most serendipitous ways. If it hadn't been for a fire in a Texas server center that shut down Weather Pixie, I would have never met Tamsin, the young woman, the talented programmer, who created Weather Pixie. I want to honor my Ada Lovelace Day pledge by sharing a brief description of her contribution to technology.

Tamsin is the programmer who developed the awesome widget called WeatherPixie or What to Wear. In my professional opinion, as an educator, I believe WeatherPixie is one of the most valuable web applications that teachers can use.

Not just educators love Weather Pixie, so you might want to try it out, especially if you like knowing about the weather. You can set up Weather Pixie for your area or for any area on Earth.

Weather Pixie is a web application or widget that anyone can use. I believe parents and educators of children of the preschool through elementary ages can use Weather Pixie to help little ones learn about the weather and what types of clothing to be worn each day. If it is raining, the Weather person (select a boy or girl) will have an umbrella or raincoat. When it is sunny and warm, they may wear shorts.

A colleague first shared Weather Pixie with me in September of 2007. In turn, I share it, as a widget and blog postings, with my readers. I hope you will download and use a Weather Pixie for your blog, website or wiki to teach your children or students or just for your own enjoyment.

Tamsin Bowles is a young, very resourceful programmer who appreciates her privacy. She lives in a metropolitan area of the United Kingdom where she works as a programmer. She made Weather Pixie because she wanted to keep up with the weather throughout the day, and we are the beneficiaries of her idea. If you like her work, you can donate at her website. She has a wishlist and Weather Pixie swag. Her family and peers have every reason to be very proud of her. I'm glad she loves technology and programming, and I look forward to hearing more from Tamsin in the future.

American Robins On Their Way

Spring is on its way in North America. As our part of Earth tilts and revolves back into Springtime in the Northern Hemisphere, it seems that everyone is worn out from the Winter weather, snow, ice, rain, sleet, thunder and lightning, where I live.

Children, adults, and even the animals anticipate Spring. We are eager for Earth to return to its Spring position. We actually live in a place where there are four seasons, even though Spring and Fall are fairly short-lived.

Around here, the bad weather won't stop, but the temperatures will increase. As the increase begins in the Spring, all the animals who took a vacation in the warm southern climes will return to their summer homes here.

One of those returning is a pretty little bird named the American Robin. The robin arrives before most other migrating songbirds, and it has a beautiful mix of songs and chirps for the important new beginnings of Spring.

Now, if you ever hear the expression(idiom, saying), "The early bird gets the worm!", you will know what it means. The people who coined this phrase originally referred to the American Robin, the early bird. When the robin moves north, the temperature is just right for earthworms to begin moving above ground.

The earthworm is a major food source for the American Robin. These birds need them to feed their new American Robin hatchlings once they arrive on the scene. Hungry babies need food to help them grow.

This epic migration is all a part of the cycle of life in North America.

To celebrate the arrival of the American Robin in North America, I have constructed a short Voki. I hope you will appreciate another aspect of Voki. Teachers and students could use Voki to animate or provide information in a variety of lessons or projects.

I hope this Voki example helps you think of even BETTER ways to use Voki in your classroom AND at home. Let's don't forget our own babies;D



Get a Voki now!



Please comment about the Voki or the American Robin. I would love to hear from you;D

Weather Pixies for Kids and Adults

On my Classroom 2.0 .ning network, one of my colleagues had this cool little widget called Weather Pixie. It is a little widget with a weather person who tells the weather for your area. You can select an individualized weather person with a variety of clothing types and hair color. There are about 30 choices.

This would be an excellent active desk add on for young students. They can learn about the weather and what they should wear. I was very impressed that the clothing on the weather person changes with the weather.

Also, the background changes from day to night as it really is where you are.

Personally, I think people of all ages will like Weather Pixies, but teachers and parents can definitely get it "for their kids and students". LOL! Yes, I am getting this Weather Pixie for my daughter.

High Technology

Using IR satellite technology, you can read this map and determine where the rain will occur. Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites tracking the cold and high cloud data from GOES.


This infrared satellite map of the Central Plains in the United States is very helpful for teachers and students studying practical meteorological tools that any person can access.

Why go to the untrained TV/Radio news reader when you can learn all about the weather and its forecasting yourself?


I love technology, especially technology that sent us to the moon.

clipped from www.goes.noaa.gov GOES Eastern US SECTOR Infrared Image Meteorologists use color enhanced imagery as an aid in satellite interpretation. The colors enable them to easily and quickly see features which are of special interest. Usually they look for high clouds or areas with a large amount of water vapor. infrared (IR) image cold clouds are high clouds bar on the right side of the image indicates the pixel brightness values for the corresponding color temperature can be determined from the following formulas: