The first Global Ocean Science Education (GOSE) Workshop in June 2015 brought together ocean scientists and education professionals from 15 nations. Panels discussed ocean science education across the K-12 pipeline, undergraduate and graduate education, and public education. Working groups discussed the future of global ocean science education, opportunities and steps for building international collaborations, and establishing a global network of networks.
Based on the recently released National Research Council report Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8, this book summarizes a rich body of findings from the learning sciences and builds detailed cases of science educators at work to make the implications of research clear, accessible, and stimulating for a broad range of science educators. This book is available in English and Spanish.
The NERACOOS ocean and weather climate display delivers information about the average weather and ocean conditions between 2001 and 2012. The display also includes information about recent and past years' ocean and weather conditions so that you can compare them to the average conditions from the past decade.
The Aquarius mission is brimming with educational content that hits all four areas of STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The design and engineering of the satellite, the science of ocean observing, the technical specifications for the mission and the importance of understanding global processes through data can all be illustrated using Aquarius as an example.
In this poster, NASA’s education and outreach team illustrates their multi-pronged approach to creating educational products and opportunities for educators to utilize information and data about Aquarius.
Scientific Process in Practice was a 2 hour long, weekly seminar designed to complement a field course for incoming oceanography majors (sophomores and juniors). Through hands-on activities, this seminar aimed to help students succeed in the field and later science courses.
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-OS 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-OS to present a series of five webinars describing the motivations and findings of this multidisciplinary experiment.
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.
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.
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.
Intended for anyone who communicates about climate change, the guide’s purpose is to assist communicators in reaching two key audiences - the general public and decision makers from government and business - more effectively.
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.
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.
COSEE-OS creates and evaluates tools and processes that broaden understanding of the ocean’s role in the climate and earth systems. To promote systems thinking, COSEE-OS applies the technique of concept mapping with demonstrated effectiveness in helping scientists and educators “get on the same page”.
Contributed by COSEE-OS staff, this article addresses research and development of concept mapping techniques and related multimedia software by COSEE-OS. These tools, developed over the past three years, help scientists see and graphically display relationships among the concepts in their field, and help them communicate those concepts clearly and logically to educators and other scientists.
Since 2005, COSEE-OS has been creating & testing models of collaboration, particularly with respect to reaching rural and inland audiences, engaging ocean researchers, and creating transferable activities for classroom education. In this presentation, we:
Summarize strides made by COSEE-OS in reaching rural and inland audiences.
Describe how COSEE-OS has increased the capacity of scientists to efficiently translate their research into compelling and relevant content for various audiences by helping them deconstruct knowledge into concepts for construction of concept maps.
Conduct two transferable activities, one from our recent publication "Teaching Physical Concepts in Oceanography: An Inquiry Based Approach" entitled "Effects of Temperature & Salinity on Density & Stratification" and one based on two Science Daily articles illustrating transferability between ocean science content and standard physical science and terrestrial ecological concepts.
This fun webpage about microbes that help cows digest their food is part of a larger website called Microbe Zoo. On this page, students can find out how cows have a special type of stomach called a rumen, which is home to billions of microbes which can eat grass and hay. These bacteria, fungi and protists provide nutrients that the cow can digest. Without these microbes, the cow would die.
Tested in University of Maine semester courses and summer workshops, this supplement to Oceanography magazine focuses on educational approaches to help engage students in learning and offers a collection of hands-on/minds-on activities for teaching physical concepts that are fundamental in oceanography.
A case study describing how Robert (Bob) Khederian, a faculty member who teaches oceanography at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, MA, uses the COSEE-OS multimedia tools in his oceanography survey course.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) 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 NSF.
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) 563-8176 E-mail: cosee-os
