Tools and Data
Microsoft Excel is available as a free trial: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/
Microsoft Office, which includes Excel, is available to teachers and students for approximately $150.
Open Office can be downloaded for free from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/office.aspx
The Data for Educators section of the UNAVCO Web site is a rich source of high-precision GPS data. The stations shown on this page are a subset of the stations available through the UNAVCO Facility Data Center. Most of the available data is collected through EarthScope by UNAVCO's Plate Boundary Observatory; data are collected at over one thousand GPS stations throughout the contiguous United States and Alaska. Additional datasets in Excel-readable format are from permanent GPS stations in Hawaii, Canada, Greenland, and a few other locations around the world.
The period of time for which data is available will vary from station to station. Dates depend on the installation date as well as the availability of processed data. In 2004, UNAVCO and its partners began to offer processed data for GPS stations as part of the EarthScope Plate Boundary Observatory and PBO Nucleus project. Eventually, all data from PBO and PBO Nucleus GPS stations built prior to 2004 will have processed data that extends from the station installation to the present.
The data can be downloaded free of charge.