A Lesson In Snow, Skiing, and Media Literacy

One of the blogs that I read outside of the Edu-blog-o-sphere is The Mountain World. Last week The Mountain World had a post about ski resorts overstating how much snow they actually receive. In article, The Mountain World linked to a Dartmouth study (link opens a PDF) that proved that ski resorts overstate the snow fall by 23% on the weekends. The study went on to report that the exaggerations declined after skiers started to post real-time reports on skiing community websites.

Applications for Education
The Dartmouth study mentioned in The Mountain World article could be a good resource to bring into a media literacy lesson. You could have students recreate some elements of the study themselves by visiting the websites of ski resorts (they all report current snowfall) then visiting the NOAA website and comparing the snowfall reports of both sites. Then have students discuss why there are differences in the reports.

Image credit:Flickr user simpologist