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COSEE Ocean Observing Systems Workshops - 06.19.2008
'Tis the season - summer is fast approaching and that means school is out. Students have wandered off to summer camp or summer school or have taken to testing the limits of their thumbs as they frantically battle digital foes on their televisions. Teachers are breathing a sigh of relief and contemplating their next move. Should they leave it all behind and take up residence in a shack on the beach, or forge ahead and rack up another course in their quest for professional development?
For the teachers who choose the latter, many of the COSEE centers are holding Ocean Observing Systems (OOS) workshops - and collaborating with each other to do so - in order to help with familiarizing teachers with the data and with learning how to use those data in the classroom.
COSEE Coastal Trends is joining forces with COSEE Great Lakes to offer a Real Time Aquatic Data Workshop, July 14-17 at the F.T. Stone Laboratory on Gibraltar Island, located on Lake Erie. This week-long workshop is open to teachers of grades 7 through 12 and focuses on working with scientists, learning to incorporate real-time data into the classroom, performing hands-on activities, and networking with other educators. Application deadline was April 15, 2008.
COSEE Networked Ocean World (NOW) is conducting an OOS-related teacher workshop for the second year. These workshops are part of a two-year project funded by the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office's Bay Watershed Education and Training grant program, Virginia Sea Grant, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). The project includes two ocean observing system teacher workshops specifically focusing on the Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System, and two years of student water quality monitoring led by the teachers that attended the Year 1 workshop.
In Year 2, these original 12 teachers are bringing a "buddy teacher" from their school or district to the second workshop (this June 25th and 26th), when they will learn to coordinate classroom implementation of ocean observing system data, water quality monitoring data, and the water quality monitoring itself. The buddy teams will share monitoring gear, allowing twice as many students to experience field work and practice collecting water quality data. Both years' workshops include presentations by VIMS and NOAA ocean observing scientists, a videoconference with COSEE NOW partner Rutgers University Coastal Ocean Observation Lab, and an OOS/water quality monitoring field experience aboard the 74-foot VIMS Research Vessel Pelican. For more information, contact Janice McDonnell.
COSEE SouthEast is holding their workshop Taking the Pulse of Our Coastal Ocean from July 7-12 at the Marine Science Research Institute in Jacksonville, Florida. This six-day residential workshop takes 20 middle and high school educators and helps them to develop new ways to use real-time data on the ocean in their classrooms. Teachers will also learn how scientists use technology to study the coastal ocean between North Carolina and Florida. Educators will receive access to new resources and take-home materials; all lessons align with national science education standards; and State Certification credit is available. Stipends will also be offered. The application deadline was May 9, 2008.
COSEE West is joining with COSEE Coastal Trends to present their OOS Summer Teacher Institute August 11-15. Twenty-five middle and high school teachers will spend five days learning about various remote sensing tools utilized by scientists in the course of their research. Participants will spend the first day at the University of Southern California (USC) going over some Ocean Literacy principles and familiarizing themselves with the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (SCCOOS) network. The second day participants will be at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory learning about satellites, what they monitor in the world's oceans and what data are available for classroom use. The third day will be at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, where teachers will get to use a remotely operated vehicle to explore the sea floor. The fourth day will be at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, where Laura Murray from COSEE Coastal Trends will help them to adapt some of her lesson plans to the West Coast. Participants will also get to explore this world famous teaching aquarium (and COSEE West partner). The fifth and final day will be at the University of California, Los Angeles where participants will wrap up the week, network with their fellow teachers, and continue the development of their lesson plans. Applications will be accepted until the institute is full. For more information contact Jane Lee, Program Manager for COSEE West at USC.
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