The once-howling wind abates as Hurricane Irene passes DC and heads to New England. For days, I and millions of others watched this storm grow, mature, and move. I suffered not at all from the storm, but others have paid dearly.

Educators talk frequently of “a teachable moment” — the chance to tie lessons to events that learners will remember, or to convert an otherwise unremarkable happening into a powerful lifelong lesson. This past week has offered two such lessons: a 5.8 earthquake in normally stable Virginia and a hurricane ripping through the Caribbean and along the US Atlantic coast.

Esri’s “Disaster Response” page includes a “Global Incident Viewer” built in Javascript so it can be viewed on any web browser, including tablets and smartphones. It’s an easy way to find and explore incidents from the last few days. But serious study calls for a customized analysis, which takes a little more work. Fortunately, it’s easy with ArcGIS Online. Here’s a current view of Irene, using the ArcGIS.com MapViewer.

From several options for weather elements, I chose “Near Real-Time Observations NOAA nowCOAST WMS”. I customized further by shifting the basemap and choosing to display just satellite imagery with the radar mosaic, wind indicators, and pressure. Were I still teaching class, I would have integrated population density, transportation networks, human and natural landscape factors, to think about the impact of the event.

These powerful upgrades in easy mapping help educators and learners better understand our world. The physical and social science aspects related to any given event or condition must be investigated and grasped if we are to meet the substantial challenges of the day. Educators wondering how to engage students more fully must use such teachable moments and these powerful tools. Asking students to dive deeply into these events, not just to “skim for the sound bite” but to plumb the depths of content, will build learners with a disposition to wonder, investigate, and integrate … lifelong learners who convert data into information, combine disparate chunks into knowledge, and act with wisdom.

In this era of high-stakes tests, and teacher salaries tied to student scores, and “cheating scandals” rocking our faith in the system, the answer for educators (and policy leaders driving the system) is to focus on helping students how the many layers of our world, from scales local to global, relate to each of them. Just as they identify with “six degrees of separation,” so too will they find more meaning, and deeper understanding of and commitment to our world, when they , explore, and grasp the patterns and relationships so visible through maps.

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