COSEE NETWORK NEWS 2012
November/December 2012
 In This Issue CNN Vol. 5 No. 10 | November/December 2012 
Focus On...COSEE Pacific Partnerships Subscribe
National COSEE Office
COSEE Online
Sant Ocean Hall
COSEE at Conferences
Working Group Updates
Resources
Center News
COSEE Network Calendar
Announcements
COSEE Centers and Council Representatives
Focus On ... COSEE Pacific Partnerships

COSEE Pacific Partnerships is this issue's Featured Center. Find out what’s new here.
 National COSEE Office
COSEE Planning for the Future The National COSEE Office held a strategic planning workshop November 11-13, 2012 at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. Stay tuned for a report.
 COSEE Online
Follow COSEE on Twitter: twitter.com/cosee or @COSEE, on Facebook, and on YouTube.
 Sant Ocean Hall
The Scientist Is In: Calling on COSEE Experts Are you looking for an opportunity to share your research with a broad general audience?  Are you coming to DC?  Consider spending a rewarding two hours sharing your research passion with visitors to the Sant Ocean Hall.  We can assist in providing appropriate “props”.  The Scientist Is In is a program that supports museum exhibitions – including the Sant Ocean Hall (SOH) – and provides personal interaction on specific topics, by allowing visitors to meet experts in the field and to expand on topics within and related to the exhibit.

Scientists or specialists are stationed within the Ocean Hall where they can point to exhibit features and also show additional artifacts, specimens, equipment, tools and/or imagery. The audience is museum visitors and can include local visitors and tourists from the US and around the world, intergenerational groups, groups of adults, individuals, and students on school field trips. The expert speaks informally with visitors about research, new discoveries, or other aspects of their work, encouraging dialogue with visitors where questions are welcomed. 

The Scientist is In occurs every Wednesday from 1:00 – 3:00 PM in the SOH.  Occasionally scientists are scheduled for other days/times to fit visiting experts’ travel schedules.  The number of visitors interacting with the expert during the 2-hour period ranges from 30 to 300+ depending on the season.  Early fall is a slow season (good for longer interactions).  Spring and summer are busy seasons (good for reaching larger numbers).  Holidays are very busy. Feedback from participating experts is consistently positive. If you are coming to DC and are interested in being a Scientist Is In, contact Trish Mace.

Ocean Today Website This website provides access to current and archived videos on the Ocean Today kiosk. The Ocean Today kiosk was designed to be a dynamic, visitor-friendly experience at the Sant Ocean Hall, and its content illustrates both the ocean's influence on humans and their influence upon the ocean. The website offers an online archive, including a transcript of each video along with links for more information. The main content themes are Ocean News, Ocean Life, Science & Technology, and Discoveries. Visit Ocean Today.
 COSEE at Conferences
SACNAS National Conference, Seattle, October 11-14 COSEE had a multi-faceted presence at the SACNAS conference, including presenting a panel, hosting Conversations with Scientists, and helping to develop Ocean Sciences Row. For the complete report, click here.

AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 2, 2012 The COSEE NCO hosted an Ocean Sciences Exploration Station during the Exploration Station Event, a free informal science family event held the weekend before the Fall Meeting. The event is held at the Moscone Center, where many exhibitors from all areas of Earth and space science encourage Bay Area families to learn about science and participate in experiments and other activities. Watch for a complete report in a future issue of CNN.

COSEE booth at AGU
 Working Group Updates
Scientist Engagement Working Group Work on the case study for Dr. Mary Jane Perry (University of Maine, COSEE Ocean Systems) is nearing completion. The SEWG case studies are featured on the newly redesigned front page of COSEE.net. We welcome you to visit the SEWG website!

Screenshot of the COSEE Florida home page
Web Working Group This month RWS added functionality to the Content Management System (CMS) to allow COSEE admin to add new stories to our COSEE.net homepage rotator. If you have a story you'd like featured here, please contact Lisa Taylor. For more information, contact Annette deCharon, WWG Chair.

ENT Sub-Group Wondering which webinar platform is most user-friendly? How to reformat video files? How to track the response to your programs? Excellence in Network Tools subgroup (ENTS) members have been busy providing expert advice on a myriad of questions from the COSEE Network, and they would be happy to provide the same for YOU. For more information, contact one of the ENTS co-chairs Catherine Cramer and Carla Companion.
 Resources
Climate Literacy Guide Translation NOAA recently announced that the Climate Literacy Guide has been translated into Spanish, and is available for download here. NOAA worked with the Ocean Literacy community (including COSEE Network members), NOAA climate scientists and educators and many community members to produce this valuable translation.

Crowdsourcing the Seafloor Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution invite the public to help identify objects they see in images of the seafloor through a new interactive website, Seafloor Explorer. Over 100,000 images taken by HabCam, a habitat mapping underwater vehicle, are posted on the site, and anyone interested in participating is asked to describe what they see in individual photographs - whether they see fish, scallops, or other organisms in each image; to provide basic measurements; and to describe whether the seafloor is sand or gravel, and whether they see boulders and other interesting objects in the frame. A description of the project is here. There are also educational resources at the HabCam site.
 Center News
COSEE Alaska The Communicating Ocean Science Workshop will be held at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium on Monday, January 21, 2013. For more information contact Robin Dublin.

 Conference participants
COSEE California At the recent California Science Education Conference, October 19 - 21, 2012 in San Jose, COSEE California and SWMEA coordinated a partner series of Ocean Sciences hands-on workshops. Many educators came and participated in the daylong series, exploring the use of ocean and coastal data, going on a virtual fieldtrip to the rocky seashore; and roaming through an inquiry-based plankton party.

COSEE Island Earth Aloha Kakou, COSEE Island Earth is pleased to announce the release of their new website. Check it out!

Expo booth

COSEE Island Earth recently participated in the 2012 STEM Program Opportunity Expo at Kapiolani Community College (KCC). KCC's STEM center is dedicated to ensuring the scholastic, scientific, and professional success of community college students in the various fields of science. The Expo featured representatives from many organizations, including COSEE Island Earth and the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), who gathered to talk to students about different marine science opportunities available to community college students. Students stopped by to learn about internships, scholarships, and volunteer work around Hawai'i.

COSEE Island Earth was also eager to promote the new Communicating Ocean Sciences course coming to KCC in the spring of 2013. The Communicating Ocean Sciences course has been adapted for an Hawaii-centric approach to learning marine sciences, and gives students hands-on teaching experience in both formal and informal settings.

COSEE NOW Rutgers University's Institute of Marine & Coastal Sciences in New Brunswick, New Jersey will host an event every other month for teachers interested in teaching about ocean literacy and bringing current research into their classrooms. Each meeting will include a Rutgers University scientist presenting on their research along with a question-and-answer period. The final hour will be spent reviewing curriculum developed to align with both the research presented that evening and New Jersey Science Standards. Background materials, lesson plans, and the presentation will all be posted online. The event will be broadcast over the Internet for those unable to attend in person. Please register for each session. Details here.

 Meeting participants
COSEE OCEAN The Ocean Literacy Inquiry Group recently held a two-day meeting at the New York Hall of Science to finalize plans for its Ocean Literacy report. Upcoming COSEE OCEAN events for Winter 2013 included the publication of the Ocean Literacy report; presentations and lunchtime workshops at the ASLO meeting in February; and training for Boston Public Schools teachers on the Ocean Science Sequence curriculum. As always, check out the GrOE Facebook page!

 Engineers working on Aquarius
COSEE-Ocean Systems Ever wonder what it's like to build and test instruments that operate in space? On October 17, Goddard Space Flight Center engineers discussed their work on the Aquarius/SAC-D satellite during a webinar hosted by COSEE-OS. The primary scientific aim is to collect data on the salinity of our oceans, revealing information relevant to ocean circulation, the water cycle and climate. The concept map-based webinar was conducted in Spanish by Amri Hernandez-Pellerano (Power System Electronics Designer), Shannon Rodriguez (Microwave Communications Specialist) and Fernando Pellerano (Instrument System Engineer) and included tips, examples and links to resources that can be used to better understand the world of NASA and how the Agency works with international partners. 113 people from the U.S., Puerto Rico and seven other countries attended the webinar. 95% of educators who completed a post-webinar survey agreed that the webinar 'provided ideas to encourage exploration, discussion and participation of my students'. Click here (PDF, 420 KB) for additional evaluation results.

NEOSEC, a COSEE-OS partner, presented its fourth biennial New England Ocean Literacy Summit, November 1-2, 2012 at the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay Campus. The theme was Ocean Literacy Principle 7, “The ocean is largely unexplored.”

COSEE TEK New opportunities for minority students in ocean sciences and technology are the basis for ongoing work. In April 2012, eleven undergraduate and two graduate students spent two days immersed in ocean science and technology at UConn’s Avery Point campus and Project Oceanology.  The students were part of UConn’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program that seeks to provide unique STEM learning opportunities for underrepresented groups.  For the full story click here.

Students
 COSEE Network Calendar
For the up-to-the-minute list of upcoming COSEE events, visit the COSEE.net Events page.
 Announcements
STEM Education Report The National Research Council (NRC) recently released a report, Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K–12 STEM Education, that identifies key indicators for measuring progress in K–12 STEM education. This report is a follow-up to the 2011 NRC report Successful K–12 STEM Education: Identifying Effective Approaches in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
Contribute to CNN! Send news and announcements of interest to the COSEE Network community to the editor, Catherine Cramer.

 COSEE Centers and Council Representatives
COSEE Alaska (Robin Dublin, COSEE Alaska)
COSEE California (Craig Strang, UC Berkeley)
COSEE Florida (Edwin Massey, Indian River State College)
COSEE Island Earth (Judy Lemus, Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology)
COSEE Networked Ocean World (Janice McDonnell, Rutgers University)
COSEE OCEAN (Bob Chen, University of Massachusetts)
COSEE-Ocean Learning Communities (Phil Bell, University of Washington)
COSEE-Ocean Systems (Annette deCharon, Darling Marine Center, University of Maine)
COSEE-Pacific Partnerships (Jan Hodder, Oregon Institute of Marine Biology)
COSEE SouthEast (Carrie Thomas, North Carolina State University)
COSEE-TEK (Ivar Babb, University of Connecticut)
COSEE-West (Linda Duguay, University of Southern California)