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S'COOL E-note for April, 2006

Greetings and welcome to the second monthly email of news from S'COOL.

THIS MONTH'S NOTES INCLUDE:

1) S'COOL Intensive Observation Period: April 17-21, 2006
2) Surveys: external evaluator and EDCATS
3) S'COOL on Tour
4) Teacher Resources
5) Cloud Photo of the Month

(1) S'COOL Intensive Observation Period: APRIL 17 - 21
In conjunction with the second annual National Environmental Education (EE) Week and leading up to Earth Day, S'COOL announces the next Intensive Observation Period (IOP). We encourage as many schools as possible to observe and report clouds during that week (unless it's your Spring Break as it will be here). Since we now have FLASHFlux satellite data within a week after your observations, we are hoping to do some even more interesting analysis and studies.

(2) S'COOL surveys
Many of you recently received an email from Dr. William Samuels, with the subject line: "Please help us improve NASA education programs". We are having our first formal, external evaluation of S'COOL done this year, and hope that you can take a few minutes to respond to this survey if you were asked. The compiled results from these professional evaluators should help us continue to improve the S'COOL project to serve you better, and compete for future funding from NASA to continue the project.
Also, as you approach the end of the school year, please take a moment to visit Step 5 under the "For Participants" cloud on the S'COOL website and complete an EDCATS survey. This is a metrics collection system that is used NASA-wide. Your responses here also help to show the impact that the S'COOL project is having. Filling this out once during each year that you participate in the project is very helpful for us.

(3) S'COOL on Tour
Have you noticed the school bus on the main S'COOL page? If you click there, you will find a list of upcoming events where you might meet members of the S'COOL team. The next one coming up is the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics annual meeting. If you are going, Susan Moore from our team would be happy to make your acquaintance in person. She will be giving a presentation on a related project (MY NASA DATA) at 9:30 on Thursday morning. She will also be spending some time at the NASA exhibit on Friday.

(4) Teacher Resources
Have you visited this area of the website recently? It's under the "Extras" cloud. You will find links here to all our S'COOL materials, an extensive collection of lesson plans, instructional materials for use when you are introducing S'COOL, and a variety of helpful links. We are always trying to improve this page, so your comments are most welcome!

(5) Cloud Photo of the Month
As always, don't forget the Cloud Photo of the Month activity. We invite interesting photos WITH EXPLANATORY CAPTIONS, for consideration for this feature of the S'COOL website.

As always, keep looking at the sky!

Dr. Lin Chambers - Director
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The CERES S'COOL Project - Students' Cloud Observations On-Line
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/SCOOL/ scool@lists.nasa.gov
Tel.: (757) 864-4371 Fax.: (757) 864-7996
The CERES S'COOL Project, MS 420, NASA Langley Research Center,
Hampton, VA 23681-2199
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