1998 Year of the Ocean Marine Education U.S.A.: An Overview 



environment, but also to appreciate the technical problems inherent in real-time ocean 

 monitoring in the environment. 



The University of South Florida will extend its "Project Oceanography" live via 

 educational television to middle school science students. In Fall, 1997, seven weeks 

 are devoted to coral reefs and seven weeks to plankton. NOPP is joined in supporting 

 this project by National Geographic Society and five private sector corporations 

 (Honeywell, K-Mart, Northern Trust Bank, TASA Graphic Arts, and Time- Warner 

 Communications). 



Sea Grant has funded fifteen K-12 education projects for 1996-97 at fifteen different 

 educational institutions from Hawaii to Maine to Puerto Rico. These projects are for teacher 

 training, curriculum development, and student field experiences. They include Operation 

 Pathfinder, which will be publishing 50 activities of its "best of the best" designed for middle 

 school students by the teacher participants. 



The Environmental Protection Agency is funding a compilation of 50 coral reef education 

 activities for middle school teachers. This effort will employ both English and Spanish editors. 

 The activities are compiled by Dr. Sharon Walker, Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, Biloxi, 

 Mississippi. Teacher workshops will be held in Humacao, Puerto Rico, in summer, 1998, in 

 conjunction with the annual conference of the National Marine Educators Association. 



In an irmovative new program being developed currently with funding from NOAA's 

 Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Division, real-time oceanographic data will be accompanied 

 by lesson plans and instructions for using the data through OAR's home page on the WWW. 



Teacher Training 



The National Science Foundation has funded summer institutes and other programs to 

 train teachers in marine education. In fact, the author directed the first summer institute in 

 oceanography for teachers in 1972-73. NSF has recently been funding the "Maury Project" at the 

 U.S. Naval Academy. This teacher training project was originally a partnership between the 

 Naval Academy, and the American Meteorological Society. With its early success, sponsorship 

 has grown and now includes the U.S. Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, the 

 Office of Naval Research, and NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information 

 Service, and NOAA's National Ocean Service. This project concentrates on physical 

 oceanography in a two-week summer workshop including laboratory and ship-board experiences. 

 To date, 76 teachers have been trained and each summer 25 more are expected to be trained. 

 After attending, teachers are expected to become "peer trainers" to conduct local workshops for 

 teachers in physical oceanography. This has been a highly successful program that deals with a 

 topic rarely or poorly covered in K-12 curricula. 



K-14 



