Exotic Species Compendium of Activities to Protect the Ecosystem is a collection of activities developed from the Exotic Species Day Camp Project for Educators. This package includes 36 user-friendly sets of lessons that incorporate experiments, art, music and games.
GLIMCES provides a packet of scientific scenarios of how global warming could affect the Great Lakes region, a review of climate models, and methods of teaching about those changes in secondary science and social studies classes.
The Island Explorers program is a student-centered, science curriculum for elementary and middle schools that is characterized by hands-on, real-life marine science activities directly correlated with the California Science Framework. As part of the overall program, students participate on several field trips to local beaches and aquaria, participate in an Adopt-a-Beach cleanup, and travel on a research vessel to the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies marine laboratory on Santa Catalina Island.
Teachers' Domain provides multimedia classroom resources and professional development online multimedia courses for K-12 educators. Resources include video clips, graphics, lesson plans, and activities. A catalog of online courses is available.
Science Standards With Integrative Marine Science was a Teacher Enhancement program funded by the National Science Foundation from 1999 to 2003. Online materials include lectures and marine science lesson plans created by the teachers who participated in this program.
MARE is a dynamic, inquiry-based science program at the Lawrence Hall of Science that transforms entire elementary and middle schools into laboratories for the exploration of the ocean. This whole school Ocean Immersion approach explores different marine environments through the disciplines of earth, life and physical science, as well as, language arts, music, mathematics and visual arts.
This collection of 41 innovative classroom activities, assembled by COSEE Great Lakes, provides teachers and students with insights into the uniqueness of the Great Lakes and their influence on aquatic life and human populations. As students engage in these interactive and thought-provoking activities, they will gain an understanding of Great Lakes science, issues, and potential solutions.
This unit from the Integrated Coordinated Science Unit Challanges explores how students can use their knowledge of chemistry to test the safety of rainwater that flows off our college campuses and streets into the ocean. The hands-on exercise uses the “5 E’s Learning Cycle: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate” and is correlated to California Science Content Standards, California Environmental Education Principles and Ocean Literacy Standards.
This document by COSEE NOW reports on a front-end evaluation designed to investigate the ways by which K-12 teachers and students can and do use real-time data to understand and appreciate the role that the ocean environment plays in their lives.
The Rutgers University Coastal Ocean Observation Lab (RU COOL) has been flying gliders for almost 4 years. On March 13, 2007 RU COOL reached a major milestone, launching the 100th glider mission from the coast of Massachusetts, off the UMass-Dartmouth vessel Lucky Lady. This mission will take the glider (RU 100) from the coast of Massachusetts to the continental shelf, where it will zig-zag it’s way down to New Jersey, before swimming to shore - a distance of over 500km.
RU 100 carries an onboard bio-optics package to measure biological activity and sediment in the ocean, which will provide a huge amount of information on how biological productivity in the ocean might affect physical processes over such a large region. Along the way it will also meet up with a research ship, assisting in the study of Atlantic fisheries. The 100th Glider Mission website contains real-time data, example research questions for students, references, and a blog.
Eutrophication is becoming an increasing problem in many coastal regions of the world ocean. It is the process in which high nutrient run-off from land can lead to low-oxygen water environments. But it’s not a very easy concept to understand, as there are several steps in the process. The Rutgers University Cool Classroom design team developed this interactive to help students learn about the stages of eutrophication.
In 2007, a group of participants at COSEE NOW (including scientists, classroom educators and designers) collaborated on an interactive module to highlight the 7 essential principles of the Ocean Literacy Initiative. This interactive represents the public beta of this new Ocean Literacy Interactive.
Rutgers University Coastal Ocean Observation Lab (RU COOL) deployed a remotely-controlled underwater robotic glider off the coast of Antarctica to test its capabilities in the harsh environment of the Southern Ocean. Robotic gliders swim up-and-down through the top 300 feet of the ocean for over a month at a time, collecting data on temperature, salinity, chlorophyll and more as they “glide” through the water.
RU COOL now has a fleet of over a dozen gliders that have been flown off the coasts of Hawaii, California, Liverpool, Florida, and New Jersey, as well as in the Mediterranean Sea. This website provides real-time data, example questions for students, and a list of relevant resources on the Antarctica glider that you can incorporate into your lessons on climate (and climate change), icebergs, biomes, and marine biology.
This time of year, meteorologists across the country are being asked “Will we have a White Christmas this year?”
In this exercise, students use maps created by the National Weather Service to dtermine how often they can expect a White Christmas in the years to come.
Christmas Island (more properly called Kiritimati) lies near the Equator in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was discovered in 1777 on Christmas Eve by Captain James Cook. The Island served as a weather station and rest stop for planes traveling to the South Pacific during World War II and was the site of several nuclear bomb tests in the 1960s. Not only is the Island named for the Christmas holiday, but an adjustment to the International Date Line in 1995 means the island is now the first inhabited place on Earth to bring in the New Year.
The National Weather Service maintains a weather buoy off the coast of Christmas Island. For a quick activity, students can compare real-time weather data (i.e. air and water temperatures, wind speeds and presure) from Christmas Island with a second buoy closer to them. As an extension, students can choose several buoys from across the globe, looking at the differences in real-time data between each while trying to describe why those differences exist.
The COSEE Coastal Trends Scientist-Educator Partnership immerses middle school and high school teachers in ocean science research experiences. Scientists and teachers conduct research and develop classroom resources based on the partnering work. Our program includes:
A residential week-long orientation that introduces teacher fellows to team members and provides some background on conducting science research
A six-week research experience in a science research facility
Extensive follow-up and support during the academic year
A comprehensive dissemination of fellowship products via the web and through hands-on workshops and conferences
This guide to teaching climate change fundamental concepts to K-12 audiences is the product of a three-day workshop titled Climate and Weather Literacy: Using the AAAS Project 2061 Science Literacy Research to Develop Weather and Climate Literacy Framework held in April 2007.
This document summarizes a statistical assessment undertaken to determine if participation in an 8-week summer science camp at Utah State University increased students’ interest in science careers and fostered their intention to pursue activities likely to lead to a science career.
COSEE Ocean Systems, with a team of researchers and other experts from the University of Maine, University of New Hampshire, and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, was established to implement several integrated activities, each designed to improve COSEE's impact on rural and inland communities. Since fall 2005, COSEE Ocean Systems has investigated issues in educational research that pertain to pedagogy, practice, and the learning process. User feedback has reinforced the desire for interactive products and processes that highlight fundamental concepts as well as their "big picture" connections. As a result, COSEE Ocean Systems is creating and evaluating tools that both highlight basic concepts and can be readily applied to other disciplines.
Evaluation Report from the July 17-21, 2006 Teaching Science by Ocean Inquiry Summer Workshop by Sheila Pendse, Center for Research and Evaluation, College of Education and Human Development, University of Maine.
