SIParCS 2022 - 'Joba Adisa
’Joba Adisa, Clemson University
Development of Computational Tools and Educational Resources to Support Pi-WRF Community Driven Learning Modules
Weather forecasting provides information communities can use to make decisions about their daily activities and prevent weather-related losses. Although weather forecasting has existed for years, few are familiar with the process, and many do not have access to tools that allow them to make their own forecast. The Pi-WRF project addresses this problem by developing educational modules and computational tools that allow users to run weather simulations on cheap microcontrollers like the Raspberry pi. Previous iterations of the Pi-WRF project have developed graphical interfaces and Jupyter notebooks that allow users to explore weather simulations interactively. However, this summer project focused on developing educational materials and tools that facilitate community understanding and contribution of weather-related educational modules to the Pi-WRF teaching box collection. To achieve this goal, the project utilized technologies such as Docker, Jupyter Notebook, Jupyter Book, Jekyll, Canva, and Google Forms. Over the summer, newer libraries were added to the Pi-WRF application, and the application was rebuilt to support multiple system architectures. Learning activities that addressed middle and high school next generation science standards (NGSS) were also developed. Finally, a contributor template and submission web page/form was created to make contributions more accessible to potential contributors. The results support community exploration and weather forecasting application to real-world problems and make it easier for educators to share contributions without particular technical expertise. Furthermore, the project suggests collaborating with teachers and conducting usability testing of the latest Pi-WRF resources to increase awareness, usage, and contribution.
Mentors: Keith Maull, Agbeli Ameko
Slides and poster