estuary sciences

Studying the Chesapeake Bay, Using Digital Resources and the Arts!!

bonniebraceysutton 1 Comment
Exploring the Chesapeake Bay
Children who may not know the way of estuaries to the sea can learn using valuable online resources.
I use a different way of teaching. Marc Prensky is right. There are people who know a lot more than I do about the Chesapeake Bay.I became the facilitator for learning, connecting the dots and some of them were using the arts , digital media and hands on science by mistake really. I had training from the National Geographic which included maps, history, art and a great video.
I wanted to think how to fund all of this and how to create a rich environment . I wrote some grants, the parents and I had a meeting and we enlisted some help from the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The Chesapeake Bay is the most important water way in this area. I took courses at the National Aquarium in Baltimore , and learned to write curriculum  . For three years I investigated

estuaries, and then the Bay as a system and then the ocean. I think I would have become a Marine Biologist if I had not been swayed by technology and the Clinton administration. But I had the curriculum , but as usual not the permission to use it at my grade level and so I reached out to NASA, NOAA, National Geographic, the Chesapeake Bay Society and parents and I found a way to get a grant. When money is given in schools and principals sign their permission , you can do wonderful things.
The final trip was ito Baltimore
We started by sharing resources from the Fish and Wildlife Service
We did Duck Stamps. We drew Duck Stamps  and learned about the various ducks who come to the Chesapeake Bay.
Here is a set of photos and resources from the Fish and Wildlife Service
http://digitalmedia.fws.gov/  The people who came from the Fish and Wildlife Service brought posters and resources too.
The Fish and Wildlife people gave us a bus to the Blackwater facility. We saw ducks in the wild and had an outdoor excursion.
National Aquarium in Baltimore
The National Aquarium in Baltimore is a beautiful place. It is expensive for students and we decided to do a bus tour.
Thank heavens for grants.
The education program is fantastics, we did adaptations and studied the salinity, turbidity waves and tides, microscopic life , seined and did pollution studies from different sites on the Chesapeake.But we did our homework. We read stories about the CHesapeake Bay, and wrote some of our own. We studied the maps of the bay and the estuary.
Smithsonian Estuary Research Center
You can see that we did a lot of work at this research center, before we had our “Eat a Crab Lab” and other activities
3.   About Crabs – Lesson 1
…ere the River Meets the Sea: Exploring Life in the Chesapeake Bay with Smithsonian Scientists SERC Project Home Page Project Team Members Activities & Lesson Plans Project Resources Photo Gallery S E R C Schenectady City School District +————-+—————-+———– Lesson About Index Crabs Lesson Worksheet 108 1 Education Drive Schenectady, NY 12303 Blue Setting Crab Up A SERC: 518.370.8100 Observation Salt Tales of the Water Blue Crab Aquarium About Crabs Lesson No. 1 OBJECTIVES: 1. Students will use the Internet to learn about the Blue Crab. 2. Students will be able to identify the…
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    Grade Level: K-5
4.   About Crabs
Where the River Meets the Sea: Exploring Life in the Chesapeake Bay with Smithsonian Scientists SERC Project Home Page Project Team Members Activities & Lesson Plans Project Resources Photo Gallery S E R C Schenectady City School District Lesson About 108 Index Crabs Lesson Worksheet Education II 1 Drive Schenectady, NY 12303 Blue Setting 518.370.8100 Crab Up A SERC: Observation Salt Tales of the Water Blue Crab Aquarium About Crabs Lesson No. 2 OBJECTIVES: 1. Students will observe a live Blue Crab. 2. Students will be able to distinguish between a male and fema…
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    Grade Level: 9-12
That service has a portable traveling lesson. I can’t think it is as exciting as being at the place.
If you look at the pictures you can see how fantastic it is. The children go out on a pier where there are stations . They have science experiments to perform.  We learned the data we needed to do the experiments back in the classroom.
One of my students surprised me. Since we were so early in the year in the crab season. I said if they caught a crab I would
buy a bushel to steam back at the school. Well this child had a plan. Her mother was a biologist. She captured an immature
stage of the crab and precisely identified it.  So we did have an eat a crab lab extra session.
The National Geographic had maps of the Chesapeake Bay and we took a canoe trip on one of the rivers we studied.
Blackbirds in the reeds, a smooth adventure.
National Geographic is partnering with groups – across a range of scientific disciplines – that are interested in exploring how FieldScope can better support student geographic learning and outdoor investigations.

FieldScope Projects  http://www.fieldscope.org/

This is awesome.

National Geographic FieldScope is a web-based mapping, analysis, and collaboration tool designed to support geographic investigations and engage students as citizen scientists investigating real-world issues – both in the classroom and in outdoor education settings. FieldScope enhances student scientific investigations by providing rich geographic context – through maps, mapping activities, and a rich community where student fieldwork and data is integrated with that of peers and professionals, adding analysis opportunities and meaning to student investigations.

Chesapeake Bay

The Chesapeake Bay FieldScope Project is a “citizen science” initiative in which students investigate water quality issues on local and regional scales and collaborate with students across the Bay to analyze data and take action. Chesapeake Bay FieldScope is a project of National Geographic’s Education Programs in collaboration with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office.
Serc does on line teaching for everyone. But I did it from the Pier and Reed Center.
Marc Haddon was my contact for a long time there.

See the  SERC Lab
This was a teacher workshop
Art was mosaics, writing a play about the bay, drawing the animals of the bay, creating a workbook for people who loved the bay, and writing a grant, the kids did this, to be able to take field trips to photograph the bay.
I never knew that there was a  boating minority connection to the study of the Chesapeake Bay regarding Frederick Douglass.
He created with others , a boat building facility for blacks to be able to be involved in the shipbuilding enterprise.
Who knew?
We collected books and read them about the bay and its children.
In the end we loved best the study of Anoxia Mae.
We wrote a grant with the help of parents and had $5000.oo to spend on field trips, excursions, making movies and posters.
This was at Ashlawn School  in Arlington, Virginia.
We did a lot more than this. One of the things you learn from being a teacher trained by the National Geographic is that children with an interest in geography learn and share with the community. So my children went to the school board to complain about the filth in local streams, and got some help on organizing a clean up day with the Arlington County  Board.
I did not plan that idea. The kids did. You can see why theme based, supported project based learning is wonderful for students.
I am thankful for the training I had at the National Geographic Society as an educator.
If I was teaching now, in a classroom, I could add the GIS information to this program.
ESRI and the National Geographic help make for a rich learning experience for kids.
More resources for everyone are at My Wonderful World .org.

Rivers to the Sea.. How do you know about Oceans ??NOAA has resources for you!!

bonniebraceysutton 1 Comment

In thinking about digital equity, we try to understand what resources are available for teachers, students and community that are the very best.

. The Department. of Commerce has outreach programs and games, and recently there is a report that has invaluable information for use in the classroom. In times of economic difficulty the Digital Equity SIG, and those of us working in Supercomputing , Broadening Engagement would like to share resources to bring education into the future. THe power of us, is that we can transform education by using new practices.
There are embedded links for those who can access them. What we love to do is to show you supercomputing that you probably don’t know you use. 

How do your Students See the Sea and learn Ocean Literacy?

Thinking About Oceanography, NOAA, Updates on Marine Life


I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind. Health to the ocean means health for us. Sylvia Earle

Place Learning , Museums and Aquariums, Other resources

The Smithsonian has a wonderful exhibit in the Sant Hall using wonderful computational resources. Here are my Iphone photos of transformational ways of teaching and learning from that site.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=92735&id=593996326

The Dept of Commerce Science on Sphere is so compelling that students often sit through the demonstrations and seem to be mesmerized. Adults too find the use of digital media an easy way to learn complex information. Thanks to computational science we can teach in new ways. Teaching earth science and geography is enhanced by digital media.

The power of us is to use transformational resources and ideas that change the way in which we teach and learn. The education director of the Dept of Commerce talked about the fact that we often teach with textbooks with ten year old information when people working in Outreach may be serving students with ten days old research. Breaking the silos with the use of project based work, or partnership learning is powerful .

THE SCIENCE EDUCATION SYSTEM

 


NOAA is one of many agencies, institutions, and organizations working to improve the nation’s science literacy and technical workforce. To understand its role in education it is critical to understand the major players in the system and the role of the federal government in the education system. This section outlines the roles of various entities in the K-12, higher, and informal education systems.
K-12 Education

The responsibility for public education is not specified in the U.S. Constitution; hence, individual states have the right and responsibility for K-12 public education. Schools, school administrators, and teachers are held accountable within their state system. Federal agencies and nonprofit and private-sector organizations can offer advice, materials, training, funding, and other support.

NOAA’S ROLE IN EDUCATION

The national need to educate the public about the ocean, coastal resources, atmosphere, and climate and to support workforce development in related fields is well established. 

The source of the last two paragraphs and the whole report is here. You can download or purchase the report here.


Authors:
John W. Farrington and Michael A. Feder, Editors; Committee for the Review of the NOAA Education Program; National Research Council
Authoring Organizations


Description:
There is a national need to educate the public about the ocean, coastal resources, atmosphere and climate. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency responsible for understanding and predicting changes in the Earth’s environment and conserving

You may not think of the powerful resources that help us to visualize and image the collected knowledge that we have. Supercomputing , and computational resources enrich our learning resources.

Tranforming Education
All rivers, even the most dazzling, those that catch the sun in their course, all rivers go down to the ocean and drown. And life awaits man as the sea awaits the river.
Simone Schwarz-Bart

There was a recent Census of Marine Life
( Data Mining )
Earlier this month, a consortium of the worlds leading marine scientists released the first ever, Census of Marine Life.  This Census is the result of a decade long effort to assess the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life.


The Census efforts lead to the discovery of more than 6,000 new species, yet scientists estimate that we still are only scratching the surface. The current catalog of ocean species contains nearly 250,00 species but the estimate, derived through extrapolations, is that the oceans likely contain more than a million.
The Census is an unprecedented snapshot in time that will not only benefit scientists but will serve to educate the masses and help raise awareness about the perils the oceans face today. There has been a census of Marine Lifehttp://www.coml.org/. There is a treasure trove of resources at the previous URL.
There is an abundance of projects available for teacher and student use in both of the resources.

NOAA resources shared.

Websites
Education Program