Want to make salinity and its connections to the water cycle, ocean circulation and climate come alive for your students? NASA Aquarius Education and Public Outreach has teamed up with COSEE-Ocean Systems to conduct three public and four educator-focused webinars, as well as a pre-launch workshop at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The 2008 North Atlantic Bloom Experiment (NAB08) was a collaborative effort to observe an entire phytoplankton spring bloom. To broadly disseminate results and contribute to the public’s understanding of ocean science, NAB08 participants collaborated with COSEE-Ocean Systems to present a series of five webinars describing the motivations and findings of this multidisciplinary experiment.
COSEE-OS External Evaluator Dr. Ted Repa, representing four COSEE Centers (California, NOW, Ocean Systems and West), shared end-of-workshop evaluations from the Graduate Student / Faculty Collaborative workshop series conducted by these Centers in 2010 and 2011 at the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting.
The Aquarius mission is brimming with educational content that hits all four areas of STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This poster, presented at the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting, summarizes available educational products and opportunities.
The Best of COSEE Hands-On Activities offers ocean scientists simple, engaging, and easily accessible hands-on activities that will make your presentations to K-12 students, the public, or other non-science audiences more effective. This collection was gathered from across the COSEE Network, with each Center submitting their best hands-on activities.
After a successful launch in June of 2011, the Aquarius/SAC-D satellite has begun collecting global salinity data - but it is not without challenges. Learn from NASA scientists what it took to design, develop, and test the Aquarius satellite and how this leads to the collection of accurate global data in this COSEE-OS hosted webinar series.
COSEE-OS has partnered with the Institute for Broadening Participation (IBP) in a joint effort to increase diversity in the ocean sciences. IBP is a non-profit organization created to design and implement strategies to increase access to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education and careers for diverse underrepresented groups. IBP's mission is to make education and careers in science more accessible to students - particularly to members of underrepresented groups, support faculty and administrators as they work to include students from a variety of backgrounds in their programs, and foster an on-going exchange of ideas and resources between individuals and institutions who are working to navigate their future in the STEM fields.
Graduate students in the sciences who both teach and conduct research show greater improvement in their research skills than do those who focus exclusively on laboratory work, says a report to be published in the August 19 issue of Science.
This NMEA Special Report on the Ocean Literacy Campaign featuring the Ocean Literacy Scope and Sequence highlights the work of dozens of agencies and hundreds of individuals to bring ocean sciences into the mainstream of both formal and informal education.
Edward Maibach, M.P.H., Ph.D. and Director of the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) lists five guiding principles in educating the public about the state of our oceans.
This is a report to be published in the August 19 issue of Science. Graduate students in the sciences who both teach and conduct research show greater improvement in their research skills than do those who focus exclusively on laboratory work.
With 14 Centers and a National COSEE Office located throughout the United States, each Center is a consortium of one or more ocean science research institutions, informal science education organizations, and formal education entities. The COSEE program is funded primarily by the National Science Foundation with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Network National COSEE Office (NCO) was established to facilitate meetings, oversee the Network web presence and coordinate the National Advisory Council. In addition, the NCO provides support and guidance to individual Centers. Our mission - to spark and nurture collaborations among research scientists and educators to advance ocean discovery and make known the vital role of the ocean in our lives - reflects a three-fold partnership between COSEE centers, formal and informal education institutes, and ocean scientists.
COSEE Ocean System's mission is to support the COSEE Network by developing flexible and transferrable tools and processes to effectively bring ocean sciences research to broad audiences. We engage teachers, ocean scientists, and informal educators in a broad range of programs, including conference presentations and regional collaborations, webinar presentations, and workshops.
Hydrothermal vents are one of the most spectacular features on the seafloor. They form in places where there is volcanic activity, such as along the Mid-Ocean Ridge. Water seeps through cracks in the seafloor and is heated by molten rock deep below the ocean crust to as high as 400°C. The hot fluid rises to the surface and gushes out of the vent openings. This hydrothermal fluid carries with it dissolved metals and other chemicals from deep beneath the ocean floor. Ecosystems have been found thriving at these vents, relying on chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis.
Academic scientists have a number of avenues through which they can participate in education and outreach (E/O) programs to address the mandate for broader impacts. During this presentation, the authors presented one scientist’s perspective on the advantages and limitations of different modes of E/O and included specific examples from the past three years of working with COSEE-Ocean Systems.
In many educator professional development workshops, scientists present content in a slideshow-type format and field questions afterwards. Drawbacks of this approach include: inability to begin the lecture with content that is responsive to audience needs; lack of flexible access to specific material within the linear presentation; and “Q&A” sessions are not easily scalable to broader audiences. Often this type of traditional interaction provides little direct benefit to the scientists.
The Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence - Ocean Systems (COSEE-OS) applies the technique of concept mapping with demonstrated effectiveness in helping scientists and educators “get on the same page” (deCharon et al., 2009). A key aspect is scientist professional development geared towards improving face-to-face and online communication with non-scientists. COSEE-OS promotes scientist-educator collaboration, tests the application of scientist-educator maps in new contexts through webinars, and is piloting the expansion of maps as long-lived resources for the broader community.
Discover a powerful visual tool to help your students and audiences– no matter where they live - improve their understanding of ocean and climate interactions. COSEE-OS has developed a suite of interactive multimedia tools that illustrate clear connections among and within the ocean, earth, and solar systems.
Last March, Amy Holt Cline of COSEE-OS and UNH, along with Perrin Chick of the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, NH and Author/Illustrator Karen Romano Young, presented the connections between art and ocean science using COSEE-OS online tools. This presentation included background on why art and science are naturally connected and should be taught together to help create more innovative and creative thinkers.
Before the presentation, questions were sent to the National Marine Education List Serve, called Scuttlebutt, to find out what ways educators have been using art to teach marine science topics in their classrooms or work places. Over fifty responses were collected and were assembled into a concept map. The map is interactive in that a description of the text is found when the cursor rolls over each circle to learn more.
The Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) is a national network with the collective mission to engage scientists and educators and transform ocean science education. The network is comprised of twelve centers that are either regional or thematci in focus. As a thematic center, COSEE Ocean Sytems has worked to create and develop a suite of interactive tools that can be used to enhance ocean and climate literacy by emphasizing the connections between the ocean and the Earth's climate system.
In two linked applications - The Ocean Climate Interactive (OCI) and the Concept Map Builder (CMB) - concept mapping is used as a foundation for learners to make connections between fundamental concepts in ocean and climate science. These cost-free online tools have been incrementally developed, tested, and refined through a series of teacher/scientist professional development workshops to maximize their efficacy.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant # NSF OCE-0707385. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
COSEE-Ocean Systems Central Office
School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine
Darling Marine Center | 193 Clark's Cove Road | Walpole, ME 04573
Phone: 207-563-3146 ext. 298 | E-mail: COSEE-OS
