The ocean, overall, is just exciting! For some students, they've never seen the ocean.
As soon as you show them footage and pictures and videos of things they can barely even imagine,
it gets them excited about science. I love deep-ocean science because
it exists at the intersections of STEM. The deep ocean has lessons about physics,
lessons about biology, ecology. They actually see that there is
new discoveries happening all the time, which makes them then want to be part of the process.
It makes them want to be the ones who ask the questions and try to solve the problems.
Using different resources and different platforms that connect us to these far off places,
it makes things real for students, and I think that's pretty powerful.
NOAA Ocean Exploration has been around for 20 years, and ever since the beginning our
role has been able to connect people, the general public, anybody, educators,
to the deep ocean. We do that using deep-sea robots, high-tech mapping systems, and a
telepresence system that beams images of the deep ocean right through the internet to classrooms.
Schmidt Ocean Institute is an organization that works to boldly explore our unknown
ocean by providing the research vessel Falkor (too) free of cost to scientists.
Ocean Exploration Trust is a non-profit organization that owns and operates exploration
vessel Nautilus and we broadcast 24 hours a day, so anyone interested in the ocean can be there,
experience the excitement of discovery and learn about this incredible planet.
All three ocean exploration organizations provide fantastic content to teachers and
students across this country. Those are great independently, but they're even better when
we can pull those together from all three and fulfill a whole ocean curriculum essentially.
The Deep Ocean Education Project was created through a partnership between NOAA
Ocean Exploration, the Ocean Exploration Trust, and the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
And it started with some seed money from NOAA's Office of Education as well as a partnership
with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. We've been working with NOAA Ocean Exploration
for more than 20 years on developing education products, so helping put the pieces together,
from staffing to development, hosting and maintenance, for the Deep Ocean Education
Project website was a very natural fit for us and we are happy to foster that program.
Educators can access the Deep Ocean Education Project website for a free
account and from there they can cultivate lesson plans that best fit their curriculum
and be able to share that with other educators. So one of the primary features is a resource hub,
so that includes things like lessons, fact sheets, background information, and a lot of
high-quality multimedia on deep-ocean topics. You can sort and search by content area,
or by the type of information that you're looking for, or the type of activity that you want.
As I sort through the website and look at things, I can save them where I want them to be.
One of my favorite parts of the website is the vessels page, where you can track all
three of our organization's ships, whether that is Falkor (too), Okeanos Explorer,
or exploration vessel Nautilus and see where these ships are in the world and jump right in
to be part of making discoveries live. And then the last really exciting
feature is an educator opportunity page which features our professional development events,
webinars, and internship opportunities for both students and teachers.
So I was there from the very start. I was one of the teachers that they consulted with. From the
get-go I knew that this was going to be something that I wanted to engage in as an educator.
If you teach something already about the ocean, if you touch on the deep ocean,
there's no better resource out there than this. But if you don't teach about the ocean typically,
this could be applied in anything, whether they are creative and imaginative, if they're
interested in design, if they're interested in science, if they're interested in art, there
are so many links that come back to the ocean. How many people get to go to the very bottom
of the ocean? What this program is doing is making something that was very, very,
very challenging for people to embrace and learn about, open and accessible to so many more people.
We're always looking for more educators to get involved, check out these resources, give us
feedback, let us know how we as organizations can continue to help you in your teaching settings.
My hope is that this project can continue to provide resources as
we discover new things, as we learn new things. NOAA Ocean Exploration continues to explore the
deep ocean with the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer. We finally launched our new research vessel
Falkor (too) and are on expedition now. At Ocean Exploration Trust, we're building
into a longer and bigger expedition season. There's new species there's new things to be
found and revealed by mapping. We never know what will come next but that's the fun of exploration.