A Virtual Weather Camp Experience (2020)
May 13, 2020 (updated May 20, 2020)
Dear Potential Weather Camp Family and others):
We are pleased to announce southwest Florida’s first-ever Virtual Weather Camp Program (to be held during the summer of 2020). Although our regular middle and high school weather camps normally draw attendees from across the Nation (and occasionally from overseas), this summer, we anticipate an even broader range of participants due to the CoronaVirus Crisis (COVID-19).
Technology has always been a part of our camp program (and we’ve been involved in summer camps for a combined four-plus decade period); this summer, it will become THE delivery tool for our camps. Still, hands-on activities, guest lectures and discussions, and data gathering and analysis will remain intact. Interpersonal aspects of camp will be replaced by an “Internet-Connected, Interactive-Classroom” (IC)2.
So, if you are the parent of a child who is driven by the weather (or you know of a child outside your family circle who is), or you are involved in scouting, 4H, or the Civil Air Patrol, the Southwest Florida (SWFL) weather camps definitely deserve a hard look. For a relatively low-cost, sans travel expenses, but with real learning at the core, any student from grades 6 to 12 will take away more from this camp then they might imagine. They will also discover that their fascination with weather is not unique; rather, they have many peers equally interested in weather and related sciences who are waiting to meet them.
Note that additional (and more detailed information) can be found in FAQ links, sprinkled throughout this introductory letter (and in future updates).
Background: For almost two decades, my wife and I (and within the past 7 years, Matt Bolton, a 2009-2011 weather camp student) have been heavily involved in running or participating in summer weather camp programs. These have taken us across the U.S., reaching Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, Washington-DC, and – now where we live – southwest Florida. All of these camps have brought local students together or they have provided an opportunity for students from across the U.S., or even some students from overseas, to see that they are not alone in their love of weather.
Then comes the current CoronaVirus Crisis (known as COVID-19) and nationwide summer weather camp opportunities have evaporated faster than rainfall on a hot asphalt pavement in July.
Recognizing that losing a year to the virus likely meant losing some students’ interest in weather, we quickly decided that it was time to take the weather camp program to a virtual reality. As Tim Hall, President of the Association of Certified Meteorologists, noted (upon learning of our plans), “This could be huge. Parents and kids are going to be on the lookout for things like this during the summer, with so many camps being canceled.”
It would be easy for us to simply post videos and activity guides and let students work through these on their own. But, as John Kennedy noted in a speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” No, none of us driving the SWFL Weather Camp program is presumptuous enough to put ourselves in Kennedy’s shoes. However, we are quick to notice when something important is taking place. This transition to a virtual camp is comparable to our initial foray into camps. There was a mission that needed to be accomplished; we had a find a way to do it!
We believe that at this time, we must work to ensure that pre-college students with a love of meteorology are not cast adrift. The CoronaVirus cannot dictate the future of a significant number of upcoming weather scientists. Rather, we must take the proverbial “lemon” given to us and transform it into “lemonade.”
The challenge is to take a fully inter-personal setting and somehow recreate an interactive framework amongst students that involve geographic distances of hundreds or even several thousands of miles from others in the online program. In doing so, we have tried to keep the inter-personal component, while capitalizing on an incredible array of online programs, data, communication capabilities, and analysis and display tools.
Framework and content: Toward this end, we have created an “Internet-Connected, Interactive-Classroom” (IC)2 framework. This is designed to engage campers in real learning. Rather than simply show them a video of an experiment, give them a data set, and ask them to answer questions, we will (whenever possible) have the campers actually replicate experiments in real-time, with us, wherever they are. The scientific process and the control of variables will be our main drivers. If there are differences in the data gathered, these differences may prove to be a more important outcome than the “official” results (because they illustrate the actual, messy nature of science and how scientists work through problems). Thinking more about this, isn’t this exactly what scientists are doing now, in 2020, to find cures and tests for COVID-19?
In addition to many hands-on activities, students will experience brief talks from guests, camp directors, and college students in weather programs via a group discussion room. There will also be formal office hours where students can come to discuss questions, findings, and/or observations. Cell phone cameras will be used to document activities, the environment, clouds, and weather-related applications. While the thrust will be weather itself (e.g., storms, weather and climate patterns, instruments, data gathering, and analysis), we’ll explore how weather touches other disciplines (and these disciplines touch weather), communication, math, physics, chemistry, geography, the law, building design and construction, and a host of related science and math areas; perhaps, most importantly, well explore how weather affects us, each and every day (physically, economically, politically, medically, and much more). All of this will be done in a fully THINKING mode (ref: FAQ 1–link downloads a Word document).
While safety is always a consideration, we realize that the only people overseeing the home-based activities and experiments will those in the camper’s household. For this reason, we will be emphasizing the concept of “responsible scientist” throughout the camp experience (ref: FAQ 11).
Separate middle school and high school camps will run for daily three-hour sessions, for two-week periods starting June 15 (HS), June 29 (MS), July 13 (HS), and July 27 (MS). The cost for each two-week program has been set at $225 per student and includes an investigative “care package” that will contain a published weather book (authored and signed by me), a camp tee-shirt, an infrared thermometer, and additional weather “tools” and materials. Parents will still need to purchase a few additional household materials (cost likely less than $20) that are needed to conduct experiments, if such materials are not already on-hand (ref: FAQs 5 and 6).
Finally, while the camp experience itself is a high-value proposition, our involvement with campers is available far beyond the camp. We typically find ourselves guiding motivated campers, through a mentoring framework, in research projects (some of which find their way into camper presentations at professional weather conferences or journal articles – http://www.weatherworks.com/NWA2019-Cantore-Hurricanes-poster-72dpi-large.jpg), giving advice about needed high school classes, sharing information about college applications, and advising about communication skills (including blogging). You can learn more about our mentoring endeavors in this National Weather Association webinar we produced in 2019: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llcWfEthZlo).
We’ve also capitalized on high school campers’ interests in videography. Two campers have scripted, helped to generate graphics for, assisted in filming and editing short educational videos about a specific weather topic. They also starred in the productions! Which can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD5gnJaIYO0
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yAF8-A6QGs
Closure: So, if you know of a student who is rising into grades 6 to 12 and would fit into this type of camp program (whether that child resides in your home or that of a neighbor or friend), please share and/or discuss this information.
For additional details about the SWFL weather camps, please visit our camp homepage http://www.weatherworks.com/swflwxcp (where you’ll see this overview letter, camp application forms, FAQs, and more). If you still have questions, please feel free to reach out to me at weathercamps@weatherworks.com.
We are confident that this camp program will enable its campers to better understand weather and related sciences, become better science researchers, and be more effective communicators (written and oral).
If you are interested in this camp program, please contact us at least two weeks before the start of the session you’d like your camper to attend. This will give us a reasonable window to answer all of your questions, get your camper signed up for camp, and get the “care package” sent to you.
Sincerely,
H Michael Mogil, CCM, CBM, NWA Digital Media Seal
SW Florida Weather Camp Director
814 Regency Reserve Circle #701
Naples, FL 34119
weathercamps@weatherworks.com
240-426-2900 (cell)
Twitter https://twitter.com/hmmogil
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/h.michael.mogil
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/weatherworks
© 2020 H. Michael Mogil
Originally posted 5/13/20
H Michael Mogil is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM), Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (CBM), and NWA Digital Media Sealholder. He is a consummate lifelong learner and loves to share any new-found knowledge he gains, as he researches life, nature, and world/universe around him. Toward this end, he also directs the SWFL weather camp program. Mike also tutors students from middle school to college in math science, language, and test-taking skills; he also serves as an expert witness in legal and insurance matters involving weather.