The US Forest Service Conservation Education program (CE) helps people of all ages understand and appreciate our country’s natural resources — and learn how to conserve those resources for future generations. Through structured educational experiences and activities targeted to varying age groups and populations, the USFS CE enables people to realize how natural resources and ecosystems affect each other and how resources can be used wisely.

Welcome to the USFS Region 6 and thank you!

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Montana State University

I recently attended a social event organized for adjunct faculty members of our university.  Sitting across from me was a woman from the Environmental Studies program who openly denounced the use of technology.  Begging to differ, I approached her during break to see just what the problems were.  Her strong responses were in favor of “hands-on, face to face” training.  I could have spent hours trying to convince her of the many benefits of offering distance delivered environmental education programs, but conceded to coming home and drafting the following list.

1. Reach the unreachable

Having lived and taught in rural communities, I know first hand that a large number of our educators are not able to access traditional professional development workshops.  It is a fundamental issue of equality in professional development offerings, including variables of travel, budget, and time.

While living in western Colorado, receiving professional development often meant traveling to Denver or other metropolitan areas, missing work, arranging for accommodations, and unplugging from life in general for however long the workshop would last. Now that I am in Alaska, multiply those obstacles by at least four.

Distance delivered workshops are accessible to anyone that can use a computer and a telephone.  No substitutes to hire, no packing, and no need to leave the family.

2. Diversity of participants

Local, regional, or statewide workshops provide for those living in those geographic areas.  Participants usually know each other, or are familiar with their small part of the world.

Distance delivered environmental education opens up the classroom to include people from very different cultures and backgrounds.  In a recent workshop, we had educators from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, interacting with a home school teacher in northern Minnesota.  In another workshop, we had an educator from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, sharing ideas with an educator from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.  Native Alaskans share historical uses for black spruce trees with teachers along the Arctic Ocean, where the nearest tree is 400 miles away.

3. Builds community of learners

Skeptics are still holding on to the visions of those first workshops that claimed to be distance education.  Indeed they were offered over the internet to students in another location, but they consisted only of text and test.  The learning was totally independent and attainable only by the most highly motivated learners.  The field of distance education is evolving, and with this evolution has come improved means of communication.  Learners communicate with fellow learners, facilitators communicate with learners, and learners communicate with content and community.

The spectrum of distance education is wide.  On one end is the tutorial CD, that takes you through short lessons, usually related to technology or static information.  On the other end, is a classroom instructor who uses a web page to house syllabus and lectures. In between are unlimited definitions of the term distance education.  My favorite is the blended approach, where several methods are used to achieve learning objectives.

In a workshop that uses a blended approach, you might experience some pre-course work, where you become familiar with background materials and the use of the technology.  Then you might meet at a yearly conference session to do hands on experiments or activities.  After the conference, you meet on asynchronous discussion boards and teleconferences while completing group activities and projects.  Once the official course has ended, a web page is created to receive updated materials and share experiences while using the knowledge gained during the course.

When was the last time you built such a community during a weekend training session?  Can you name any of the classmates that you did not already know?

4. Flexible schedule

Finding the perfect time for a workshop can be the most difficult part of the planning process.  Weekends are good for some but not for those attending as part of their regular work week.  Many people say they would take the workshop if only it were offered next week, not this week.

The great part about a distance delivered workshop is that it is not limited to a set number of days during a particular week.  For example, a Project Learning Tree workshop is traditionally taught in 7 to 15 hours over one or two days, usually Friday evening and Saturday and Sunday.  We have adapted this workshop to a distance delivered format, which lasts for five weeks.  Each week has its own objectives and participants have all week to complete them.  This might be during their lunch break, or after the kids are put to bed in the evening. Time is spent concentrating on content, not on getting to a location.

5. Shrinking budgets

Lets look back at the example given above, where educators in rural or remote regions need to leave their communities to receive training.  When I lived in Colorado, this meant driving 250 miles over the continental divide from Grand Junction to Denver.  Weather was always a consideration, and an overnight stay was always included in the plans. For one day of training, there was two days of travel, hotel room, food and fuel.  In Alaska, this could equal $2000 for two day training, since most rural villages are off the road system and requires air travel. Many rural educators would rather opt for the distance delivered workshop, which often costs less than $100.

Now let’s imagine you are the organizer of the training.  You need to rent a room, plan a menu, gather projectors, find speakers, provide accommodations, set up transportation — the list is long with many expenses attached.  A distance delivered training using internet and telephone requires a lot less effort and expense. One major expense is for conferencing charges, which for a group of 15 accumulating 3 hours of teleconference time, equates to $300 or less.  The facilitator must be trained to deliver in this new venue, but only once.  And of course the workshop must be designed and developed, which requires a different expertise than a face to face model.  This infrastructure will need to be in place or attainable within your organization.  A coop might be nice for environmental educators to use so they can share resources and developers.

6. Incorporate local environments

I am often told that distance delivered workshops remove you from the interaction and experience that you get in the traditional version.  The experience is definitely different, but not removed.  I reply by saying you can not achieve as deep a connection between the individual and their local environment in a face to face workshop when it is offered several hundred miles from where the participants live. If designed properly, a participant will be interacting with their local environment and community, making each lesson relevant to them.

7. Accessible resources

Traditional workshops often bring in local experts to share information about local resources.  The expert is asked to participate for a limited amount of time, giving a prepared presentation, and staying around to answer some questions, before they head back to the office. The interaction is good and participants can gather some notes and reference materials.

Now imagine having access to experts from around the world!  We have asked experts in brain research to address the connections of current research and how students learn. This is done during a teleconference, after the participants have done some background reading provided by the expert.  After the call, students are able to formulate questions and send to the expert via email.  Questions and answers are gathered and posted to a web page for everyone to review and discuss.

8. Easy to update

Information is changing at such rapid speeds these days that by the time you prepare for your face to face workshop some of the materials, which you spent hours copying at the print shop, have already changed.  Dates change, contact information changes, and current events can put a totally different slant on your session.

Most distance delivered courses include some form of internet presence, be it a web page or courseware offered through a university.  All of the scenarios mentioned in the last paragraph could easily be remedied by a few key strokes.  No late night visits to the copy center or library to make corrections to materials.

9. Save fuel and energy

We are all guilty of traveling to workshops in our individual vehicles.  They all line up nicely in the parking lot of education facilities or remote outdoor classrooms.  Maybe this is true because we enroll independently to attend sessions that interest us individually, and require less effort to jump in our own vehicles to get there.

Distance delivered workshops typically meet on the internet and/or telephone. If you have access to these things at work or at home, no travel is required, except the distance between you and the coffee cart. And when fuel is creeping to $3 per gallon, this can turn into an issue of savings for you and your organization.

10. Can be paperless

How many years have we dreamed of the paperless event?  It is now possible!  All information can be provided electronically or linked to the World Wide Web.  Notes are gathered in discussion boards and emails.  Teleconferences can be recorded and offered on a CD.  Workshops are marketed via web pages, electronic newsletters and email.

Some may say I am biased and that I think distance delivered workshops are superior to the traditional model.  I would have to agree. Personal experience has continuously proven that when participants spend five weeks together, using the materials in their own environments, with their own audiences, and sharing those experiences with fellow participants, they learn more than if they sat together for a weekend and did hands on activities.

So many variables exist in both scenarios that would divert attentions, but in distance education, everyone participates.  No one can slip out the door for a telephone call or walk around the park. Many times you are competing with great weather and a beautiful setting, as we often experience in Alaska.

No one in a distance delivered workshop is allowed to sit in the back of the room and not contribute to the conversations.  Shy and boisterous participants share equally in discussions and everyone is allowed to formulate responses.  The greatest outcome is that there is more opportunity for critical thinking, a skill all of us could spend more time practicing.

Sandi Sturm is an online learning designer and owner of Creative Conservation in Wasilla, Alaska.  Her company is dedicated to conserving rural values through creative education and outreach.  You may learn more at www.creative-conservation.com.

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Last year we began a service-learning summer program for high school students focusing on climate change. The Climate Challenge program consisted of a summer residency in the North Cascades followed by a service project in which elementary-school students were taught by the returning high-school students back in their home communities that fall. We planned a challenging field itinerary for the summer portion – studying glaciers, interviewing scientists and exploring hydrological systems. The student team made both geographic and intellectual discoveries and practiced presentation skills in order to bring their stories to their hometowns. We anticipated that they would struggle to master new skills, become proficient communicators, and hoped that they would become passionate teachers.

What we did not anticipate was the strength of the reaction from the adult audiences that the students encountered. The first clue was a rant posted online in response to an article in the local newspaper that briefly mentioned the then-pending program. (From the reference to “enviro-nazi youth,” I can only assume the comment was made by an adult.) Other reactions were far more favorable. People consistently commented upon how inspiring the students were, mentioning the word ‘hope’ again and again. The rangers and resource mangers that showed the students their daily work thanked us for the opportunity to interact with the students. The most striking meeting happened over dinner at our environmental learning center one evening when the students gave a brief impromptu presentation as a way to introduce themselves to a group of adults attending a naturalist class. When the students sat down, a woman across the room stood up and turned towards them. “I want to thank you all. We have done such a poor job of taking care of the Earth and now my generation has left you such a mess. I am so grateful to you and want you to know you are our only hope.” By this time, tears were running down her face, the dining hall was still and a few other adults also had red eyes. As she sat down, I looked over at the students, who were gape-mouthed. I had been nervous about them confronting the enormity of the task before them and wondered if the woman’s address would discourage them.

Over the course of the rest of the program, the students referred to that night as the point when they began to take the program more seriously, realizing that people were relying on them in earnest to address climate change. At times the amount and intensity of the expectations being put forth seemed a bit overwhelming and unrealistic for the students. As staff, we were often asked how to teach kids about climate change without getting depressed or depressing them.

Amid all this, the students never struck me as burdened. Yet neither did they seem uninformed. If anything, they were saturated with information and were quick and adept at adopting new ideas and applying scientific concepts. Flux seems to be a natural state of affairs for them.

The youth who are growing up now, with climate change as a primary concern, are facing a far different threat than any confronted by previous generations. Since the founding of the United States of America, people have faced civil war, wars in Europe, unrest over race, wars in Asia and the possibility of annihilation by nuclear war. While variations of all these threats still exist (and may always be present to some extent), they are all generated by humans.

In these cases we are both the victims and the agents. Meeting these challenges is a matter of appealing to the humanity that lies within the enemy, an enemy that is biologically identical to us and therefore subject to all the great strengths and debilitating weaknesses that we ourselves are capable of. Hope is rooted in our vision of ourselves not just as a nation or race, but as a species.

The problem with casting climate change as a foe is that we can barely define it or its effects in concrete terms. At best it is a poorly understood process, driven by forces that we struggle to comprehend, let alone grasp well enough to manipulate. We may know enough about the gross concepts behind the carbon cycle, meteorology and hydrology to understand that our climate is changing, but these topics become exceedingly challenging and intricate when combined with the physics of aerosols and clouds, quantum mechanics and paleoclimatology. In addition, climate change occurs on a scale far greater than most of us can easily fathom. We know what tens of thousands of years is, but how many of us can honestly say we have an actual operating sense of even a hundred years? In terms of both the mechanisms involved and magnitude of change, climate change is a great unknown. The level of uncertainty posed by climate change is far greater than that posed by war.

This is probably where the generational hinge folds. Students today see climate change as a static fact, a reality that looms in the form of species loss, desertification, and wars about water. They consider themselves optimistic yet realistic. They expect to see changes in the climate, but they also expect to adapt, to develop technologies for a different planet and to live under laws that strictly regulate the use of resources. They anticipate losing habitats, biodiversity, and undeveloped landscapes. I’ve asked students what they think the difference between older people’s views of climate change are compared to theirs. Upon hearing their answers, it occurs to me that the fear surrounding climate change is ours, not theirs. Climate change is a great unknown, but this is true of so many other factors in these students’ lives- whether they will go to college, fall in love, have children, what career they will choose, whether they will encounter fortune, illness or wealth. To them, the issues resulting from climate change are among a host of many other big questions. These students still embrace uncertainty, and right now, that fact is to their advantage.

This past fall, the same students that addressed the group in the dining hall were presenting their views on youth, climate change and involvement before a panel of federal officials. One young woman stood up and related a pivotal moment that occurred for her during the summer. As she spoke about standing on top of a mountain and realizing that the land as far as she in every direction was public land, her voice cracked and tears ran down her face. She took a deep breath and continued. “I realized that this land was my responsibility and that I want to do everything I can to protect it into the future.” While some of us may see a reason for despair, there are others who hear a call to arms.

When these students learn about pressing issues, their response is a desire to inform others about it. They intend to catalyze the change they believe their communities need. One student said “It’s easier for us because people who grew up earlier kept seeing things get better and all we’ve seen is things go downhill.” They consider themselves naïve, but are looking forward to making and seeing change. They realize that not all the changes will be good, just as they realize that they will not be successful in all they undertake. They also understand that climate change has winners and losers, but they see no reason why they, and we, can’t adjust.

Perhaps as these students age, and go on to both succeed and fail at the challenges that occur in the course of their life journeys they will become jaded, tired and lose hope. Their expectations don’t seem as high as those of students 10 or 20 years ago, but they also seem to be more accepting of the situation. I am confident that as they go out into world they will find some assumptions that they are working under to be far more challenging than they imagined, but also suspect that their lack of pre-set notions about what should be will serve them well as they innovate and adapt their way onward.

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This book might be more appropriately titled, “Mothers who Murder their Children.” It explores how Mother Earth periodically cleans house of the majority its biota. Sadly, the reference to Medea in the actual title is probably lost on most of us, unless you know more Greek mythology than I did. For the rest of us, Medea was the wife of Jason the Argonaut, who took revenge on her cheating husband by murdering her own children. Suddenly the book sounds more interesting, huh?

The author, University of Washington Professor and local Seattle boy, Peter Douglas Ward, is a paleontologist who keeps chambered nautiluses in his office to study their life history. He recently re- turned from a season of research in Antarctica, so expect his next book to focus on fossils from the South Pole (you heard it here first).

A very prolific writer, with over 12 “popular science” books on geol- ogy, prehistoric animals and mass extinctions in print, including The Call of Distant Mammoths: Why the Ice Age Mammals Disappeared (1997) and his more recent Under a Green Sky (2007). Most of them are setting on my bookshelf watching me as I type this review of their newest sibling. Ward’s trick to literary longevity is to take a topical or less well known topic, research the hell out of it, spin some aspect to make it controversial, and write it all up in a fun “wiz bang” way. In general, they are fun reads and you learn a lot more about some semi-obscure aspect of earth or space science than you ever intended.

As in his other books, Ward has taken a theory most of us know, “the Earth as benevolent Gaia,” championed by James Lovelock, and put together a book full of data to suggest dear Mother Earth is not only not “good,” but that she actually is a serial killer. A serial killer who will knock us off as surely as those teenagers falling asleep in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series.

Is it as fun to read as his other books? Maybe not, perhaps because it is much darker than the other books; with less humor, more chemistry, and a greater preference than usual for long and complex words. Be prepared, Ward’s books are for the “scientifically literate,” so keep a dictionary handy and be prepared for an onslaught of enumerated lists – the guy loves them, and they seem to be on every other page.

Dr. Ward’s books are usually ideal for motivated middle, high school, or undergraduate students. If a student has enjoyed Under a Green Sky, or other Ward books, they’ll probably like this one, but you should probably preview the book before recommending it to students. After all, the book is about how your Earth Mother will even- tually kill you – plus just reading some of the chemistry can be a killer all by itself.

In a nutshell, what does he say in the book? His thesis (as in Green Sky) is that only one of the six mass extinctions we’ve documented on this planet was due to an extraterrestrial cause (i.e., an meteorite). For the majority, life poisoned itself just by living and producing carbon dioxide and other chemicals – the resultant high and low temperatures sent most everyone back to “Start” without collecting $200 on the way.

The mechanics of the book are straight forward: The author convincingly lays out his hypothesis in the first 8 chapters. Chapter 9 is a summation (its title) presented in four enumerated points of the previous chapters (so you might want to start here and then reread 1-8). The two final chapters (10 and 11) are on the implications of the hypothesis (death to all) with a interesting final chapter entitled “What can be done?” Sadly, the answer seems to be “not much.” Ward is a paleontologist, not an engineer, and the engineering section of the chapter (which is less than a page long) seems fairly weak and focuses primarily on giant reverse space blanket over the ice caps – to reflect heat back into space. I’m not an engineer either, so maybe I’m missing something, but it does seem that a co-author who is an engineer could have provided some alternative scenar ios.

Still I enjoyed the book, maybe not as much as Under a Green Sky subtitled Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future, but this is a nice follow-up, not overly long, and well worth its reasonable price. Is it true – is Earth a Medea or a Gaia? To a large extent, who cares — both Ward and Lovelock (see The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can by J. Lovelock) suggest that regardless of the model for earth, things are going to hell in a hand basket. So, unless we get our act together, it is only a question of how, not what.

Along with the Medea Hypothesis book, I’d strongly suggest reading What We Know about Climate Change by Kerry Emanuel, an important little book that is a nice companion to Ward’s book, and that can almost be read at one sitting (if you like to stay up and read very late into the night).

Orlay Johnson works for the National Marine Fisheries Service/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is a member of the Northwest Aquatic and Marine Educators (NAME). This review originally appeared in Scuttlebutt, the newsletter for the Northwest Aquatic and Marine Educators (NAME).

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The West Coast Governors’ Agreement on Ocean Health

The ocean plays a critical role in maintaining ecosystems and is essential to our health and wellbeing. Its diversity of resources belong to all of us. Yet, only 1 in 10 Americans understand ocean systems or the threats these systems are facing. It is critical to educate and promote stewardship among our students and the public- at-large in order to restore a healthy, productive and resilient ocean.

Recently, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Commission reported on the status of the ocean, acknowledging that improved coordination among governing bodies is needed, and that oceans should be managed on an ecosystem level. We need look no further than our own offshore system, the California Current, as illustration. It moves south along the western coast of North America transcending political boundaries, while at the same time, sustaining marine wildlife populations, regulating climate, and providing a myriad of other ecosystem services relied on by our states, the nation, and the world.

The California Current and surrounding waters provide Washington, Oregon, and California with a rich bounty of resources — resources that are, unfortunately, in serious trouble. Polluted waters, declining populations of fish and other marine life, degraded near-shore habitats, risk of severe storms and tsunamis, and impacts related to climate change are but a few examples. To address these critical issues, the Governors of these three states have launched a proactive, regional collaboration to protect and manage resources along the entire West Coast.

In September 2006, the West Coast Governors’ Agreement (WCGA) on Ocean Health was signed. Since then, these three states have worked together and consulted with federal agency leads and stakeholders on appropriate actions to improve the health of our ocean and coastal resources. The final action plan includes specific steps for addressing the following key priority areas: clean coastal waters and beaches; healthy ocean and coastal habitats; effective ecosystem-based management; reduced impacts of offshore development; increased ocean awareness and literacy among the region’s citizens; expanded ocean and coastal scientific information, research, and monitoring; and sustainable economic development of coastal communities. To improve regional coordination between the three states, Action-Coordination Teams (ACTs) were established — one for each of the priority areas. To date, each of the ACTs have developed draft work plans, which have been released for public comment (June 2009). Final work plans, incorporating public comments, are currently being released.

Priority Area 5 of the WCGA Action Plan aims to “increase ocean awareness and literacy among citizens.” The specific actions are: to integrate ocean science and conservation into expanded environmental education curricula by encouraging changes to education content standards enhancing ocean literacy (Action 5.1), and to support ocean awareness efforts for the public and for decision-makers at all levels, and encourage improvement and expansion of self-directed learning institutions and volunteer programs (Action 5.2). To achieve these goals, change needs to occur in all aspects and levels of the education process, and all of the relevant stakeholders – students, teachers, informal educators, parents, administrators, community members and others – need to be engaged.

Action 5.1

When the National Science Education Standards were re- leased in 1996, there was little mention of ocean topics. As a result, most state content standards do not include much about the ocean, coasts, or watersheds. Consequently, there is little teaching of these topics in most K-12 classrooms. Without a coherent framework of concepts and messages, these important topics remain on the margins of teaching and science learning. It is essential that states like Washington, Oregon, and California systematically incorporate marine science into curriculum. The Ocean Awareness and Literacy ACT plans to assist educators in integrating ocean literacy principles and concepts into their classrooms and programs by providing guidance on the tools and existing resources that help achieve mastery of state science and other content standards.

Action 5.2

Outside of the classroom, an increase in public knowledge and understanding of marine science and issues is also critical to engage individuals to become better stewards of the environment. By establishing an integrated network of information, people, and resources, everyone, from the public to policy-makers will be better able to make in- formed environmental decisions. The Ocean Awareness and Literacy ACT plans to utilize online technology to raise awareness of and improve access to Web resources. Additionally, they will make available physical products such as exhibit materials and toolkits for various audiences that illustrate essential ocean and coastal issues and processes and demonstrate why this information is important in daily lives. Messages developed will focus on the California Current and other ocean and coastal topics common to the three states. Decision-makers, the public, educators and students, government agencies, and non-profit and volunteer organizations will benefit from the resources and information developed.

As one might expect, funding is the primary constraint to accomplishing these tasks. While the WCGA Executive Team works to find money for these projects, the ACT members continue to make progress on implementing the work plans using current resources and/or through lever- aging efforts with similar, external activities.

Immediate, meaningful actions can be taken — at all levels — to help restore and maintain the health of our oceans. You can:

- Contribute ideas, resources, funding opportunities, etc. to support our efforts.

- Complete an upcoming survey that assesses ocean literacy needs and encourage others to complete the survey.

- Share your favorite lesson plans and ocean-related resources for inclusion in the broader WCGA materials.

- Expand your educational efforts to address issues of regional significance.

- Engage decision-makers on significant regional ocean and coastal issues that warrant their attention and support.

- Familiarize yourself with the Ocean Literacy Principles and the newly introduced Scope and Sequence Conceptual Flow Diagrams (CFDs) – one for each of the 4 grade bands for each of the 7 Essential Principles. They can be found at http://www.oceanliteracy.net/usa/ocean_science_literacy/scope_and_sequence/ home.html.

- Integrate the Ocean Literacy Principles and CFDs into your educational programming.

- Encourage your colleagues to participate in professional development opportunities to learn ocean science concepts, skills and related pedagogy.

- Periodically check the WCGA Website for more information as implementation efforts move forward — http://westcoastoceans.gov/.

For more information, contact Nancee Hunter, Co-Chair of the West Coast Governors’ Agreement Ocean Literacy Action Coordination Team — nancee.hunter@oregonstate.edu.

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A school class at Colquitz River Park in Victoria, BC

Along the Cowichan River, surrounded by the smell of cottonwood resin, an elementary school student discovers that dragonfly larvae look like aliens. In a quiet wetland, a middle school teacher marvels as a guest expert shows his class how to fold cat-tails into duck shaped toys and send them downstream with wishes. In a municipal office, a bureaucrat considers a community proposal, initiated by an elementary school class, to create a new park.

Since 1994, the Colquitz Watershed Stewardship Education Project (CWSEP) has been bringing students, teachers, and the community together to experience educational turning points like those above. Headed by teacher Lenny Ross, the award winning project has successfully instilled an environmental ethic in students of all ages and their teachers by connecting them to the watersheds in which they live.

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by Gene Williamson

Forty years ago, when I first decided that I wanted to teach about the oceans in my 8th grade classroom in Corvallis, I was faced with a daunting task. Not only were there only the sketchiest of materials available, the prevailing wisdom was that students were not capable of dealing with sea floor geology, tides, and similar topics. There was no course of study or a common understanding of what we wanted to teach and how. Several other Oregon teachers were having similar problems. We met to discuss our mutual conundrum and, as a result, NAME was born.

Forty years later, with an ocean-literate society becoming increasingly important, the individual efforts of marine educators from around the world are finally being assembled into a single cogent statement of what we need to teach, and a logical approach to teaching it. The work that began five years ago under the auspices of the National Geographic Society, the Lawrence Hall of Science, and several COSEEs¹, with input from teachers and scientists from across the country, resulted in a brochure that outlined the seven basic principles of Ocean Science Literacy along with their corollaries. To see brochure, visit: http://www.coexploration.org/oceanliteracy/documents/ OceanLitChart.pdf

In the intervening years, teachers and scientists have developed a logical scope and sequence (conceptual flows) for teaching important marine topics from grades K -12 (http://www.coexploration.org/oceanliteracy/usa/ ocean_science_literacy/scope_and_sequence/home.html).

It is far easier to look at the story lines that are developed by the scope and sequence than it is to describe them. These story lines have been repeatedly reviewed and revised by scientists and teachers working in concert to make sure that they are scientifically and pedagogically sound.

In September 2009, an Oregon Summit on Ocean Science Literacy was held at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Representatives of all aspects of the development of the scope and sequence came together with representatives of other stakeholders, including the liaison from the Western Governors’ Agreement of Ocean Health and the education directors from our National Estuarine Research Reserves, to discuss progress to date.

On the horizon is an effort to write activities that correspond to specific conceptual flows for grades three through eight. But, if you don’t want to wait, terrific ocean, estuarine and watershed activities and curricula have been developed and published, some of the best right here in NAME country. For sure, educators who want to add ocean studies to their classroom will find the task much less daunting than it was in the 1960s.

¹Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence – a network of catalytic, multi-faceted collaboration to integrate on-going research in the ocean sciences with K-12 education and outreach.

Gene Williamson is a former NAME & NMEA board member. You can email Gene at: epwbiz@cablespeed.com

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How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science

Authors: Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano
Publisher: Smithsonian Books/Harper Collins
ISBN 13:9780061558412

Reviewed by Orlay Johnson

If you would enjoy learning about the life and times of Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a UW graduate and Seattle oceanographer best known for tracking ocean currents using sneakers and bath toys lost, then sit back and enjoy. Flotsametrics, is co-written by Dr. Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano, a local science writer.

It is a fun read, with plenty of oceanographic insights, some very personal experiences and a glimpse into the very “way out” thinking that allowed Ebbesmeyer to champion some bizarre ideas, like using Nike sneakers and bathtub toys lost off of freighters to study massive oceanic gyres.

The books has its ups and down, but I most enjoyed the parts directly related to Dr. Ebbesmeyer’s scientific studies – especially his initial graduate studies at the University of Washington with Cliff Barnes. As an new master’s student he discovered something he called “snarks” in Puget Sound’s Dabob Bay. Snarks are coherent slabs of water that move from the South Sound to the Strait of Juan De Fuca. They may not seem very important unless someone is dumping sewage into the Sound and expects it to disperse in a few hours. Fortunately, there are plenty of similar adventures in his wide -ranging life that are equally fascinating, from studies of massive oceanic currents tearing up oil rigs (and leaving them to float away like giant jellyfish), theories of how life evolved in floating pumice, and studies of the massive plastic inundation of on the world’s oceans.

The book includes well-crafted insights into Dr. Ebbesmeyer’s life in Seattle and what it is like to be a scientist at the turn of the 21st century. This includes stories about his family, parents and close colleagues, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Still I think it is important to remember that scientists do not work in a vacuum – science occurs within the framework of family, friends and support institutions and the book well conveys this. It was his mother who originally pointed out the advantages of studying sneakers in the ocean, and his relationships with a variety of colleagues, including Akira Okubo and Jim Ingraham are wildly productive. Ebbesmeyer’s long association with beachcombers and beachcombing networks also is a model of how scientists can work together with the public in a literate society to advance our understanding of the world.

On the negative side, the book is uneven and some parts seem so personal they are almost painful. It is laudatory that Scigliano is equally credited as co-author, but the book still jumps around from science to family and back again much too sharply. Some of the science is very speculative, such as an entire section on a theory of how life evolved from pumice drifting on the ocean currents. The maps and illustrations challenge the reader – they are tiny, often difficult to read, and way too few and far between.

I was pleasantly surprised by the profuse and well-documented references for “further reading.” So often, biographical accounts lack documentation, and/or they are way too boring, but, like icing on the cake, this book has fascinating and useful appendices, a full glossary, and a far better index than most textbooks.

If you want just the science, check out Goggle or the Web of Science and look up Ebbesmeyer’s almost 100 peer-reviewed papers – he is an articulate and prolific scientist.

If you want to know about the person behind the science as well as some interesting and inspiring stores about what is like to be a modern day oceanographer, check out this biography. Good reading one way or the other.

Orlay Johnson works for the National Marine Fisheries Service/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is a member of the Northwest Aquatic and Marine Educators (NAME). This review originally appeared in Scuttlebutt, the newsletter for the Northwest Aquatic and Marine Educators (NAME).

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Learn more about Farm to School at:

http://www.farmtoschool.org/

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by Jude Curtain

The sun was shining. There was just a hint of fall in the September air. Twenty three fourth graders were hunched over their white dishpans, excitedly sorting through their samples of forest litter. So began a series of lessons designed to guide students in generating questions, creating investigations, and ultimately finding answers.

Lesson #1: Noticing Details
My experience has been that children need training to be good observers. My first lesson engaged students in examining a container of forest litter, sorting all the things they discovered in their samples, and recording each item in their science journals.

Lesson #2: Open vs. Closed Questions
We defined closed questions as those that had a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Open questions were those that required an explanatory answer. Examples of both types of questions were generated first by me, then by the students in a class discussion.

Lesson #3: Creating Questions About Our Forest Litter Samples
Applying what they had learned about open and closed questions, students began lists of forest litter questions for which they wanted to know the answer. After the lists were completed, students were asked to contribute their favorite question to the class. A partial list of favorite questions included the following:
• I wonder if roots of the same plant look the same when the plant grows in different areas?
• Do bugs prefer rotted wood?
• Why is rotted wood soft?
• Do worms prefer damp soil?
• How many different kinds of moss grow in our schoolyard?

Lesson #4:  Sorting Questions and Creating an Investigation
As a group, our class addressed each question, trying to determine how we could find the answer. It became apparent that there were basically three types of questions: questions you could answer by doing some book research; those you could answer by doing an experiment or investigation; and questions one could not easily answer. We discussed the point that, while all question were interesting, the ones we would focus on were questions answerable by investigation. Students thought that comparative questions would best suit our focus, while “why?” questions were least suited to being answered by investigation. As a class, students created an actual investigation designed to answer one of the favorite questions. Through the democratic process, we chose an investigation about whether earthworms prefer damp or dry soil.

Lesson #5: Conducting the Investigation
Working in six research teams, students devised a common method, conducted their investigation, then shared results for replication. Based on their results, students formed their own conclusions about their investigation.

Lesson #6: Expanding the Arena for Questioning
once the students had practice in the art of crafting an investigation on a given topic, the entire schoolyard was fair game for generating questions. Students went on a tour of the schoolyard, notebooks and pencils in hand, given the task of generating questions, emphasizing those questions which could be answered through investigation. Students were encouraged to vice their questions aloud, since that seemed to stimulate questions from other students.

Lesson #7: Creating a Second Investigation
Once again, students were asked to contribute their favorite questions. We discussed which ones could be answered by conducting an investigation and again, we selected one question and crafted another investigation as an entire class.

Lesson #8: Independent Practice: Creating an Investigation as an Assessment
As a way of assessing student achievement, students were asked to create their own investigation based on one of the questions that had been contributed. Their charge was to:
1. State the question
2. State the hypotheses, including the null hypothesis.
3. Make a prediction.
4. List the steps to their investigation.

The results were outstanding! Students definitely understood the process of creating an investigation. It was exciting to give students such an independent task and see them create appropriate questions on their own. The process of developing questioning techniques is a lengthy one, but my experience has been that this progression of lessons leads to students’ deeper understanding of the process of inquiry science.

Jude Curtain is a 4th grade teacher at Noxon Road School in Poughkeepsie, New York. This article first appeared in The Best of CLEARING, Volume V.

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