Education: Educator Opportunities: NOAA Ocean Exploration

An essential component of NOAA Ocean Exploration’s mission is to enhance ocean science literacy and understanding of why it is important to explore our little-known ocean world. To help fulfill this mission, NOAA Ocean Exploration offers professional learning opportunities for educators to dive deeper into ocean science and exploration topics.

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Learn how to bring deep-sea topics alive in the classroom at one of our professional development workshops for educators (grades 6-12). Workshops introduce participants to ocean exploration tools and technologies, demonstrate a variety of hands-on lessons and student investigations designed to guide students’ sensemaking of deep-sea phenomena, and explore additional free, online ocean exploration education resources. Our professional development workshops are offered around the country in cooperation with our Education Alliance Partners.

Fall Professional Development

Exploring the Deep Ocean with NOAA

Join our team and fellow educators at an Education Alliance Partner site nearest you for a full-day, in-person professional development workshop to learn about why and how we explore the deep sea. Together we will dive into hands-on, standards-based lessons and activities, and discuss implementation strategies to bring the excitement of ocean science and exploration into your classroom.

Exploring the Deep Ocean with NOAA Education Materials Collection (pdf, 202 KB)

Exploring the Deep Ocean with NOAA workshops will return in Fall 2025, check back soon for more information.

The image shows a woman engaged in an interactive scientific activity. She is seated at a table with a grid-like board marked with letters and numbers, where wooden sticks are inserted. The woman, wearing a light denim jacket, concentrates on placing or adjusting the sticks. Behind her, other individuals are seated at the table, surrounded by various educational materials like papers, colorful folders, and stationery items. The setting appears to be a workshop or classroom.

Close-up view of a diverse assemblage documented on dive 1 inside the Gully Canyon, including bamboo corals, zoanthids, encrusting demosponges, hydroids, an anemone, a Freyella elegans seastar, and a squat lobster.

Spring Professional Development

Topical Deep-Sea Workshops

These full-day in-person professional development workshops will feature student investigations, hands-on activities, and supporting education materials on exciting ocean phenomena, exploration technology, and discoveries from expeditions. Topics will rotate annually.

Spring 2026 topics to be announced in the fall.

Past Onsite Opportunities

Two women sitting at a table with a filtration setup and various lab materials.

Spring 2025

Life Beyond Light: Chemosynthetic Communities of the Deep Ocean

This full-day in person professional development workshop introduced participating educators to hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, two deep-sea ecosystems with dense biological communities fueled by chemosynthesis. Workshop materials included phenomenon-based student investigations, hands-on activities, multimedia from past expeditions, and more.

Life Beyond Light: Chemosynthetic Communities of the Deep Ocean Resource Collection (pdf, 267 KB)

A woman with dark hair and a woman with blonde hair participate in an onsite professional development opportunity.

Lesson packages from retired PDs

**NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer Education Materials Collection (2010 - 2017)**

Volume I: Why Do We Explore?; Volume II: How Do We Explore?

This lesson collection was developed to encourage educators and students to become personally involved with the voyages and discoveries of the Okeanos Explorer – the only federal vessel dedicated to exploring our largely unknown ocean for the purpose of discovery and the advancement of knowledge about the deep ocean.

Learning Ocean Science through Ocean Exploration (2003 - 2010)

This popular lesson package (last updated in 2006) provides educators with a comprehensive scope and sequence through a variety of ocean exploration subject areas.

Past Online Opportunities (2020 - 2023)

Screenshot of a past deep dives with ocean explorers video.

Deep Dives with Ocean Exploration Experts

View the collection of past Deep Dives

This series of previously recorded ~90-minute online professional learning events features intriguing and informative interviews with experts in specific fields of ocean science including cold seeps, ocean technologies, and maritime heritage.

And, to bring these deep-sea topics and others alive in your classroom, check out our classroom-ready educational materials, organized by Ocean Exploration Topical Themes!

Professional Development Opportunities

Professional Development Workshops