EARTH - EDUCATION AND RESEARCH: TESTING HYPOTHESES – BRINGING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INTO THE CLASSROOM USING NEAR-REAL TIME DATA FROM OCEAN OBSERVATORIES

EARTH is a professional development program for K-12 and community college teachers from a wide variety of educational backgrounds to develop curriculum using real and near-real time data from ocean observatories (e.g., Bermuda Atlantic Time Series, Tagging of Pacific Predators, Ocean Color WEB). These week long workshops have served to build a wide and useful network between numerous educators and researchers while accomplishing three goals: (1) to have scientists share their research data and results with the educators, (2) testing, review and critique of previously developed EARTH exercises by participants as part of the application process and (3) development of new exercises based on the science presented to the educators by the researchers. The first EARTH workshops (2002-2005) were held at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in conjunction with Monterey Bay Aquarium and some later workshops have been held at a variety of locations on both coasts with several co-sponsors (e.g. C-DEBI, C-MORE, Mid-Atlantic COSEE, COSEE-Alaska, NASA).

The program week has three or four scientist presentations with time directly after each presentation for educators to explore the data and have discussions with the scientist. In addition, each participant presents a recap of a previously developed EARTH exercise that they have tested in their classroom the previous year. This provides valuable feedback to the EARTH staff which helps them to get exercises ‘ready for prime time’ on the EARTH website (http://www.mbari.org/earth/default.htm). The end of the weeklong program provides an entire day devoted to participants collaborating in creating lesson plans, gathering resources and data for the exercise(s) that they are developing. The EARTH workshops have developed numerous open access exercises/lesson plans in several ocean science disciplines (biology, geology, chemistry, marine technology) at a variety of grade levels, all of which can easily be modified for use in almost any class. These workshops provide an invaluable opportunity for educators and greatly enhance their students’ learning.