Interesting Stuff Online

Animated Weather Maps

So, these are NOT new, in-fact I compiled a bunch of them about one year ago at Currents in the Air, Ocean, and Lakes, but here we go:

It all started with the US wind map by the folks at HINT.FM.
Then we got earth and that is still one of the best: different atmospheric levels, 2D/3D, and different projections.
Windyty is all that, but also includes the forecast models.
VENTUSky is more of the same (albeit in 2D), but includes some additional variables.
MeteoEarth, finally, seems to be similar to VENTUSky, but in 3D.

Who will win the presidency?

Who will win the presidency? by FiveThirtyEight is about as real-time as it gets...

Five Years of Drought

Five Years of Drought is a nice mapping example and tutorial by John Nelson using data from the US Drought Monitor. Or, play around with the already processed data.

Snow TARTES

For geeks only: Snow TARTES is an online snow albedo computation using Python.

NASA’s Global Tour of Precipitation

Virtual / Augmented Reality in Education

Sure, both Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are pretty hip topics these days in education...especially in Higher Education with the obvious goal to make online learning more 'realistic' and thus appealing to a greater number of potential 'students' (aka customers). Here are some useful sources related to VR and AR:

Kathy Schrock has a nice compilation and discussion of tools and resources at Virtual Reality in the Classroom and at Augmented and Virtual Reality in the Classroom.
Audry Watters offers a much more critical view and history at (Marketing) Virtual Reality in Education: A History.
Still - let's be honest: VR is cool and The Garden as a Story Map and in Virtual Reality is a great example.
Wearables in Education looks at some of the current tools available.

Finally, Virtual Worlds and Augmented Reality for STEM Labs and teaching (STEM) labs online - that's for many the 'Holy Grail' of online education = finding a way to outsource these resource-intensive science labs for non-science majors that - let's be real - nobody actually cares about.

Here's the future when AR 'blends' with real reality.

HYPER-REALITY from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.